I Am Not There
by Manchester
Summary: Xander and Buffy are about to wed, only to discover a very big problem concerning this. Presented with fulsome thanks to Greywizard for permission to use his 'Prophecies? We Don't Need No Stinking Prophecies' as an inspiration.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This tale is based on a story by the author Greywizard at the BtVS crossover site known as Twisting the Hellmouth. All settings, creations, and original characters by Greywizard are the property of that author, who graciously gave me the go-ahead to use his concept and post what I wrote based on his work at other fanfiction sites.

* * *

"I CAN'T STILL BE MARRIED!" Buffy Summers shrieked. "THAT'S WHAT I CAME _HERE_ FOR!"

Seated next to her at the office cubicle located inside the Cleveland City Hall Building (Records Branch), Xander Harris managed to choke out, "Please don't yell at the nice lady, Buffy."

His strangled tone was the result of feeling like his fingerbones were being crushed into powder. The one-eyed man then hurriedly pried his aching right hand out from Buffy's formerly fierce grip. This was possible only because that Slayer had now lapsed into a genuine stupor, staring blankly past the bemused black woman quizzically peering over her computer monitor at the two young people in their chairs before the bureaucrat's desk.

"Ah, Ms. Crawther," Xander politely read off the nameplate placed upon the desk. "Could you do us a favor and explain why Buffy's still married to her former husband? Or better yet, you could just fill me in, and I'll pass it on to her when she comes around," dryly added this man, as he now shot a concerned glance at his future wife, who hadn't reacted the slightest to anything he'd just said.

Checking again the information currently being shown upon the monitor screen, the middle-aged city clerk simply shrugged in bafflement. Though, a hint of sympathy appeared on this woman's features when she looked at her latest clients and told them (him, rather, since the young girl huddled in her seat seemed from her glazed expression as if she'd just been hit right between the eyes by a wrecking ball), "I've got Ms. Summers' marriage records right here in our database, but there's no indication at all of any divorce proceedings. Either we never received the proper documentation to finalize the dissolution of marriage, or it never took place, for whatever reason. In any case, I'm sorry, but without the right paperwork on file, we can't issue you another marriage license."

That finally brought Buffy back to life, as she then spluttered loudly, "But, but, I _did_ sign the divorce papers! I mailed them right back to the law firm that sent them too, like they asked!"

Nodding politely, Ms. Crawther now advised, "Well, then the best thing to do would be to contact the law firm again, and find out what happened. It might be only a simple mistake or something else like that, but if you want to get married again here in Cleveland, or anywhere else, you have to first get a legal divorce from your current husband."

At those last words, Buffy flinched slightly, with Xander managing to notice this infinitesimal cringe due to thoroughly knowing his companion since their days together at Sunnydale High. In the very next instant, Buffy abruptly stood up, mumbled a few words of thanks towards the other woman for her time, and the blonde then quickly left the cubicle, not even looking back at all at Xander.

When the man himself also hastily got to his feet and then started a quick apology as well concerning their discourtesy by leaving in such a rushed manner, the office clerk easily waved her hand in a gracious farewell gesture, firmly telling a relieved Xander, "Go after her, young man. She needs a good hug, with what she just heard. I hope it'll turn out to be something trivial, and we'll see you and your soon-to-be-wife back here right away to get your marriage license. Go on now, shoo, shoo."

Giving Ms. Crawther a thankful smile, Xander hurried out of the records department in his search for Buffy. He finally found her bent over a drinking fountain in one of the building corridors, pretending to sip from this. As he came up behind her, knowing the Slayer's superhuman senses would instantly recognize him, Xander was unsurprised at suddenly having an armful of the small woman there giving him a desperate hug. Once again feeling the very familiar sensation of his ribs bending in Buffy's grip, Xander stood in front of his fiancée pressing herself up against him, rested his chin upon the top of her head, and he waited patiently for Buffy to relax her hold.

Just before black spots began to dance in his vision, Buffy snuffled tearfully into Xander's shirtfront, "I should have known something would go wrong, trying to set up our surprise marriage plans! It was stupid to think it'd be so easy-," as she then let up slightly on the man she loved.

Drawing in a few welcome breaths, Xander tenderly rubbed the palms of his hands in circles against Buffy's tense shoulders, to then cautiously say, "That lady back there, she said it might be something unimportant that wasn't your fault. Even if things somehow went wrong, you had a real good excuse, what with all the rough stuff in your life back then-"

"Hey!" was indignantly huffed by Buffy.

She tilted her head back, scraping the top of her head against Xander's chin, as the Slayer glowered at the man she was still embracing. Xander himself looked down into Buffy's annoyed face, and he heard her growl, "Listen, after all those hassles with Dawn and Child Protection Services years ago in Sunnydale, I made damn sure to follow every single instruction in any legal documents I got later on! I'm telling you, I _sent_ in the divorce papers to those lawyers, all correctly filled out!"

"Okay then, we call them up and find out what happened," soothingly declared Xander, whose concerned mood speedily improved at seeing the sudden glint of hope appear in Buffy's eyes. Encouraged, he went on, "Do you still have the phone number for the law firm that sent the papers to you?"

A tentative smile lifted the corners of the Slayer's lips, as Buffy thought this over, to at last remember, "Yeah, it's with the rest of my stuff in our apartment back at the school."

Now it was Xander's turn to hug Buffy, as he breathed into her ear, "Great! Let's go home, find it, and call them up, Mrs. Harris."

From where her face was again pressed up against Xander's long-sleeved flannel shirt, Buffy snickered into his chest, as she once more pointed out, "It still makes me sound like a kindergarten teacher, _Mr._ Harris! Speaking of that, let's hold off calling the law firm right away when we get back home, Xan."

The man holding his beloved in his arms looked startled for a few seconds, until a very dirty grin slowly blossomed upon his features. Xander next teasingly asked, "Why?" in a tone that was sure it already knew the reason for this delay.

There was a momentarily silence from Buffy still leaning against Xander, until in a truly deadpan voice which still held a hint of a giggle in it, she answered, "Because when we get back, I need at least a full hour of…"

"Yeah?" eagerly interjected Xander into that very alluring pause Buffy had just trailed off with her statement. Unknown to this besotted man, a very evil feminine grin was now upon the Slayer's hidden lips, as with exquisite timing, she concluded:

"…Harry-cuddling time."

For the next few seconds, Buffy shook with silent laughter, as the male body she was holding onto was now totally immobile in its dashed self-esteem. Finally, she heard over her head the short grumble of wounded pride from Xander, "That really messes up the schedule."

Still smirking into her fiancé's shirt, Buffy was promptly diverted from savoring her gloating at once more getting Xander good, while she gaily protested, "Hey, you know the whole school would be more than happy to rearrange their schedules without a second thought to take care of Harry!"

In a mock snarl of irritation, Xander groused, "I wasn't talking about our kid! Nope, your paying more attention to Harry means something much worse, that there's even less time for Xander-cuddles from you."

Buffy then lazily rubbed her cheek against the soft cloth of Xander's shirt, as the young woman purred back to him, "Oh, well, if that's all…," as she then shifted her hands, slowly sliding these down the middle of her lover's back to stop at the perfect spot for cupping Xander's lower buttocks in the palms of her hands. Whereupon, Buffy now gave him an enthusiastic Slayer squeeze.

Over Xander's strangled squawk at being groped right in public by Buffy, he also heard coming from her the truly satisfied comment: "That oughta hold you until tonight."

Right after that, another's throat was politely cleared. This sound came directly from behind the embracing pair where Buffy continued to keep Xander's rear in her firm clutch. The pair of startled California natives shifted their bodies to simultaneously peer around at who'd just disturbed them.

Xander and Buffy saw a resigned office worker standing there, clearly waiting for them to leave the spot in front of the corridor drinking fountain. Instantly developing identical deep blushes, the former Scooby Gang members broke apart and then sidled away to the right, with the city clerk simply rolling his eyes in mild exasperation and shaking his head at their behavior, as he finally stepped forward to quench his thirst.

While they headed down the building corridor side-by-side on their way back to the Janna Kalderash School for Exceptional Young Women, Buffy and Xander traded glances of suppressed hilarity. Then moving as one person, both of these young people reached out, to continue their walk while lovingly holding each other's gripped hand.


	2. Chapter 2

Xander Harris looked up from depositing the tray holding two steaming cups of hot chocolate onto the small table before the living room couch of their apartment. He next sat down upon the couch, directing a fond look towards Buffy Summers coming out of the small side bedroom which held the center of the world for them both. The Slayer currently had a gentle, maternal smile on her lips, as she walked over to join Xander on the couch, curling up in his arms. They drank their chocolate in companionable silence. It wasn't until both people heard a soft whimper drifting from Harry's bedroom through the open doorway that they realized it was time to finally discuss the day's events.

Over the last month or so, the pair had learned their new son was comforted by the sound of his parents' conversations from the other room when he'd been put to bed for the night and was falling asleep. So, they'd soon gotten into the habit of talking at length with each other during the evenings. Not merely over what happened today, but also what had occurred between the Sunnydale survivors during their seven years of battling evil in that demon-infested California city. Without intending it, Buffy and Xander started gingerly patching up their long friendship which had become extremely tattered due to so many mistakes, secrets, sorrows, and resentments between the pair.

The child that somehow came into Xander's possession in another dimension, magically transported right into his arms along with a message begging him to care for an orphaned baby known as Harry James Potter, also did something during his contended slumber which made this little boy an unknowing combination of an emotional referee and mediator. Harry could and did sleep through any amount of confessions, weeping, laughter, explanations, and forgiveness. However, at the first sounds of angry words, an immediate howl of panicked alarm coming from the awoken toddler would promptly cause Buffy and Xander to rush into their son's bedroom while forgetting their latest quarrel about shared events in their past, to together reassure Harry that all was indeed well. This was also truly effective in forcing the pair of young people still in their twenties to finally understand neither of them were perfect, and they shouldn't expect the other to be, either.

Not that things became completely wonderful between Xander and Buffy right away. The give and take of their rapprochement might have been much more civilized due to Harry's presence than either had plainly expected, but there were still misunderstandings and acrimony to be worked out between the Scoobies. It sometimes wound up with one or the other grumpily sleeping alone on the couch for the night.

At that exact moment, Xander wondered if this lonely snoozing by either of them was going to occur again later on tonight, considering how exactly things might go regarding the upcoming discussion about their unsuccessful visit today at the records building to get a marriage license. Summoning his courage to the sticking point, Xander now flat out asked what was on his mind.

"So, honey, how'd it turn out with your call to that law firm about your divorce?"

For a few seconds, Buffy was frozen in Xander's arms, until much to his relief, she sighed and reached out to return her empty mug to the coffee table, joining the man's already-finished cup there. Bringing back her hand to start stroking the top of Xander's thigh, the Slayer glumly confessed, "It didn't."

"_What?!_ They never got what you sent them-?"

"Oh, they did," corrected Buffy, who went on to add in her still-morose tone, "But when those people sent his own divorce papers to my…"

Trailing off in her obvious attempt to avoid using the word 'husband', she eventually started again, "…my ex, he never sent them back, or said and did anything else to the law firm about this. So, since I didn't either, the lawyers figured that it wasn't their concern any more. Though, I had a really good excuse back then for not knowing what was going on." Buffy's concluding statement was delivered in a supremely flat monotone.

Without even thinking about it, Xander hugged Buffy hard, with the Slayer herself continuing to rub the man's leg, as if she was taking comfort in this contact. His remaining eye filling with tears, Xander leaned forward to gently kiss the back of Buffy's head, all while knowing with a sinking heart exactly what grief-stricken thoughts and memories were now filling his loved one's mind.

Considering all of the unbelievable experiences that Buffy Summers had lived through in Sunnydale (in addition to actually dying a few times there), it was the height of irony that a simple car crash years later had almost accomplished what a horde of demons and other monsters couldn't achieve. Buffy had barely survived a goddamn drunken driver, Xander inwardly raged, his fury only increasing at the heartbreaking reminder which was inexorably coupled with that outcome:

Her unborn baby hadn't.

The quiet anguish shared amongst the two people on the couch was abruptly ended by a sleepy child's burble coming from the bedroom. Their heads swiftly turning at that sound, Buffy and Xander now smoothly joined with each other in arising from the couch and striding across the living room together into Harry's quarters.

Not registering at all the mild, familiar tingle passing over their skin from stepping through the protective magical wards set up by the most powerful witch in the world to guard her affirmed nephew, the man and the woman stopped in front of their son's crib. Xander watched Buffy lean over her child's bed to tenderly stroke the little boy's cheek. A soft sigh came from Harry as he contentedly sank deeper into slumber, with his chubby fist tightening further around the leg of the small stuffed animal he was holding onto in a death grip. Mr. Gordo the Second bore all this with equanimity, as if the plush toy pig actually understood it was accomplishing its sole purpose in existence, and did so with perfect fulfillment.

Harry's new parents now had their own version of absolute contentment for a good couple of minutes. They stood together before the crib, with Xander's hands affectionately resting upon Buffy's shoulders as they gazed down at their son.

However, the former carpenter knew some things had to be said concerning what had just been learned, and Xander now spoke, "Buffy, it sounds like _we_ need to talk to…Brandon Martin."

There were a few moments of edgy silence inside the bedroom. In a worried attempt to distract himself from how the feminine shoulders in his grasp had abruptly tensed, Xander found himself musing over the odd reflection that in meeting and marrying in quick succession a totally ordinary guy from outside their supernatural world, Buffy had also managed to unwittingly maintain her perfect average. Like all the other times, she'd been through a relationship with somebody possessing a name that'd work equally well as either their first or last name. Ford, Pike, Angel, Riley, Parker, and maybe also Spike, if you really tried-

Xander's thoughts were interrupted then by the very reluctant voice coming from Buffy while she continued gazing down at a sleeping Harry. "You're right, Xan. No matter how much I don't want to, I'm going to have to go see him in person for the first time since I left. Not just about finding out what happened over the divorce, but…about our time together, and how to tell him that I'm so sorry about everything."

In sheer astonishment, Xander blurted out his next question without actually meaning to. "You haven't seen or heard from him at _all_ since then?"

"No," came a shamed whisper from the Slayer. Buffy then sniffled, "I know it was all my fault, marrying Brandon just to have some kind of a normal life, and then walking out on him when I realized it was a horrible mistake. What happened after… Well, I was really messed up, and I just didn't need any more guilt in hearing from him. I was glad enough to let things slide and hope he'd gone on with his life." The young woman now really started to cry.

"Oh, Buffy," sighed Xander, as he gently turned her around and brought her into his embrace, as she sobbed onto his chest. The man patiently waited for the emotional storm to pass, looking over the head of the woman in his arms, down to where Harry was peacefully dozing in his crib through Buffy's meltdown.

Xander mentally reassured his son, *Relax, kiddo, your mom isn't always like this. It's just that things sometimes get too hard for one person to bear, and they don't know how to ask for help. Been there, done, that, sautéed with garlic butter the t-shirt. Your dad's gonna fix this. You, on the other hand, just have to concentrate on getting all the toes of your left foot into your mouth, which'll really make the Buffster smile. Right, huddle's over, ready, break!*

Clearing this throat, Xander now gruffly announced, "Buffy, you're not gonna meet your ex on your own. I'll be there too, and please don't argue about it."

From where she'd been pressing her crying face against his chest, Buffy lifted her tear-stained features to stare with wonder at Xander, as she then unwillingly mumbled, "I, I'm not so sure that's such a good idea, but…I really do want you there. Let's hope that everything works out for the best in Maine, anyway."

Xander blinked in shock, not sure he'd heard correctly. "Maine? The _state_ of Maine?"

"Yes, that one," Buffy answered in her mild bewilderment, not understanding why Xander was reacting like this.

"Why?!"

At that abrupt question delivered in an actual tone of growing panic, a puzzled Buffy then bestowed upon Xander an increasingly-suspicious stare. She nevertheless explained, "I tried calling first our - mine and Brandon's - old apartment, but I got a new tenant there, who didn't know anything about him, or where he was living now. So when I talked to the law firm, I asked if they knew how to find him. There wasn't any kind of telephone number, but they had his most recent address, which is there. Now, what's making you so nervous about that place, anyway?"

"Um." Xander tried to organize his worried thoughts, as he also wondered how to properly enlighten the love of his life without her beginning to think he'd suddenly gone nuts.

"Well, for one thing, Maine is…"

After a few more moments of apprehensive silence without that sentence being completed, with her fiancé evidently needing some kind of verbal encouragement or maybe even just a good poke in the ribs, Buffy impatiently prompted, "Maine is _what?_"

In a very sheepish mumble, Xander finished, "…Stephen King country."


	3. Chapter 3

Edwin Adamson placidly sorted through the stack of today's mail that he'd just removed from the large mailbox on its thick steel post at the end of the lane from his farmhouse. His ears pricked at hearing a car coming down the private gravel road bordering the family farm a few miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean. The elderly man with his lined face wasn't expecting any visitors today, but considering the battered wooden sign at the side of the country road two miles away informed anybody looking for a shortcut that the unnamed turn-off was a dead end, it was extremely unlikely a stray motorist had decided to finish off their afternoon drive by coming all the way here merely to disturb Ed's privacy.

A small, two-door sedan came into sight past the far curve down the road. Ed squinted at this approaching automobile, causing deep facial wrinkles created by decades of working outdoors on his land in all kinds of Maine weather to become more prominent. He didn't recognize the vehicle, and when it came close enough to make out the two occupants in the front seats, those people there weren't familiar to him either. The farmer was soon able to spot the rental tag on the car's front license plate, which led to the instant assumption that here was another bunch of goddamn lost tourists looking for directions. Wonderful.

On the other hand, he was also feeling a little bored at the moment. Even if it was pretty early in the year for vacationers, like any true Maine native Ed was always up for a chance to participate in the state's favorite sport of 'teasing the summer complaints.'

Which resulted in having the driver of the rental car come to a complete stop on the gravel road right at the spot where an old guy in his muddy boots, faded overalls, long-sleeved denim shirt, and a John Deere baseball cap was standing, all the while thoroughly examining his held mail. Seemingly engrossed in this mundane task, the man gave no sign at all he was aware of anyone else in the vicinity. This complete absorption continued, even when the car's passenger side window came down and a woman's voice asked impatiently, "Is this 200 Carver Lane?"

Without a flicker of emotion shifting his aged countenance, the farmer paid no attention whatsoever to that question. Instead, he intently studied the latest Publisher's Clearing House envelope presently in his right hand offering a million dollars (tax-free!) to some lucky person sending in their letter of acceptance before the deadline. After several more seconds passed without any kind of reaction or answer to her inquiry, the woman now drew in an annoyed breath, clearly about to ask again at a much more louder volume at this obviously deaf guy.

With exquisite timing, Ed then turned his lean body slightly, while also lifting the envelope up to the sunlight, still not looking at all towards the car, where an aggravated feminine choking sound now came. All due to the farmer's casual shift in his posture which had revealed behind himself a mailbox with an address painted upon its front in big letters: 100 CARVER LN.

After a beat, the woman's voice tried again, this time with an evident edge in her tone. "Well, can you tell us where 200 Carver is?"

Moving with excruciating slowness, Ed placed his sweepstakes letter at the bottom of the stack of mail in his grasp, and he then commenced a leisurely study of the new letter on the top of the pile now exposed to his gaze. This exact piece of postage had a very interesting stamp attached to this letter, a fine example of philatelic artwork that showed a wild duck in its natural world, swiftly flying through the air. Hmmm, it wasn't too soon to start planning for this fall's hunting season…

At this exact point, when the sound of dainty teeth grinding together started to come from the parked car's position, Ed absently replied, "Ayup."

Straight-facedly counting down in his head the ensuing seconds of complete silence from the female occupant of that car, Ed waited for the recipient of this laconic answer to finally realize that he'd just confirmed that he _could_ answer her question, not that he _would._ However, the amused Maine farmer was a little sorry at what happened next. He'd actually been looking forward to, at the very least, an exasperated feminine screech of sheer irritation that would declare himself the winner in their little exchange.

Instead, a very polite voice now came from someone who'd finally remembered how her parents had taught a little girl to mind her manners. "Pardon me, sir, but would you please tell us how to get to that place, if you'd be so kind?"

Well, now that he'd been addressed in such a courteous tone, Ed could afford to be a trifle magnanimous in his victory. So for the first time since the rental car had come to a stop before himself, the farmer actually looked directly at the vehicle and its passengers Which at present included a pretty young woman in the front passenger seat steadily eyeing him over the half-down side window, her lips ruefully pursed. Jerking his chin forward to point his down the gravel road, Ed told this pretty stranger, "Just keep going on for another few miles, ma'am. It's at the end of the road."

"Thank you very much," graciously replied this passenger, who now ordered, "Okay, Xander, let's go."

The woman brought her side window back up, and the car then obediently rolled forward at a respectful walking pace, so not to spray any gravel from the rear wheels towards the man left at the mailbox, who thoughtfully eyed this departing vehicle. It still seemed a bit odd to him that Brandon hadn't mentioned during their talk yesterday morning whether the younger man was expecting any visitors in the near future at the beach cottage owned by the farmer. Well, Ed reflected, it really wasn't any business of his, but he did hope that those strangers knew what they were getting into.

While the Maine native contemplated this, his pensive expression slowly shifted into one of weary sadness. Ed might've displayed an entirely different reaction on his face, if he'd known that the mature man was himself being closely studied by the departing car's driver.

Continuing to watch through the rear-view mirror as the farmer they were leaving behind themselves then turned to walk back up the lane to his house, Xander then announced in a tone of dark suspicion, "He's one of _them,_ you know that?"

Buffy lifted up her gaze to the car's roof in her total exasperation, as she groaned, "Listen, you big dope, will you just knock it off? We've been in Maine for at least six hours now, and there hasn't been any sign at all of any stuff like a rabid St. Bernard, a spooky hotel, or a haunted Plymouth Fury!"

"That doesn't prove anything," was Xander's prompt rejoinder while he kept the car pointed down the middle of the road during all this.

He went on to add in a totally serious tone, "Besides, you have to admit the guy back there looked like a perfect example of someone being mentally controlled by an alien spacecraft buried somewhere around here."

"You just have to beat this to death, don't you?" Buffy snarked. "Sorry, but the memory of our last Christmas party when you screamed in terror after unwrapping Dawn's present isn't ever gonna go away."

Xander muttered under his breath, "Oh, gee, an autographed, first-edition copy of a book about an evil clown ruling an unaware small town. It's what I always wanted."

There was now silence for a few moments inside the car. This vehicle slowly went along the private road, with this silence curiously fragile despite the previous cheerful banter among the Scoobies. Over the last few hours, both Xander and Buffy had fallen back into old habits of teasing each other, in order to avoid dealing with their emotional turmoil. However, now that they were almost at the end of their journey, Xander reluctantly realized things needed to finally get serious. He glanced down and to the right out of the corner of his eye at Buffy's hands in her lap clasped together hard enough for her fingers to start turning white. Xander decided to carefully sneak up on the potentially risky topic.

Staring ahead through the windshield at the road starting to go through a small valley with low hills on either side, Xander cautiously asked, "Speaking of your twisted sister, did Dawn demand her usual babysitting fee in agreeing to take Harry for the weekend?"

A guarded smile faintly quirked upwards the corners of Buffy's lips, as she also watched their trip towards the end of the valley. "Yeah, a free pick of anything in my shoe closet. She was looking forward to that, plus also using Harry to scare off the latest persistent, would-be boyfriend."

"That's our little Dawnster," approvingly noted Xander. He shot a wary glance over at where Buffy momentarily seemed to be in a slightly better mood, to then hazard, "Uh, she didn't ask why we were going off this weekend on our own?"

Buffy didn't reply for a few nerve-racking moments, until she softly sighed and answered Xander. "She just assumed we wanted a few quiet days together for us both before our marriage, and I didn't have the heart to tell her otherwise. Back then, Dawn was thrilled about….Brandon, and while she's accepted what happened afterwards, my little sis has been polite enough not to pester me about him. I didn't think it was such a good idea to tell her about us going to find my not-yet ex and having him sign my divorce papers."

Xander's stomach clenched at how Buffy's voice had abruptly gotten flatter while delivering that last comment. It didn't help at all that ever since he'd learned that Buffy was still wedded to her husband, Xander had silently agonized to himself over the two most obvious reasons, completely differing from each other, which had instantly occurred to the one-eyed man over the failure of the Slayer's former life partner to end their marriage:

Either Brandon Martin wanted Buffy Summers back; or, the abandoned and angry spouse dearly wanted his wife to somehow pay for leaving him.


	4. Chapter 4

"Well, we're here," announced Xander quite unnecessarily.

He stopped the car and turned off the engine. Both he and Buffy now stared through the windshield at the little house a few yards further on a brick path starting at the very end of the gravel road where they'd just parked their automobile.

Neither paid all that much attention to their surroundings, despite how scenic it was. The area around themselves was a snug seafront cove looking out upon the wide Atlantic Ocean gleaming in the late spring sunlight. Low waves broke onto the tiny beach directly behind the house, with the onrushing water foaming over numerous jagged rocks scattered among the sand.

The pair got out of their car, closing the vehicle doors after themselves in unison. The faint "thump" of this action blended in with the muted roar of the surf and the sound of the mild onshore breeze. This wind was also rustling the leaves of the abundant maple, pine, and oak trees covering virtually all of the slopes of the low hills rising in a semi-circle around the spot where Buffy and Xander were now beginning their walk towards the house. Both of them continued to eye curiously this dwelling.

The beach cottage was a small, one-story wooden structure that seemed fairly old but still in a well-kept condition. There was a fresh coat of green paint and white trim, all the windows of the few rooms of the house looked intact and clean, and several patches of roof shingles appeared newer than the rest. What it didn't possess was any actual signs of inhabitation: nobody around, no smoke coming from the brick chimney, and a total lack of anyone peering through a front window at the man and woman strolling towards the house.

Xander glanced over at Buffy walking at his side, to then ask her, "Anybody home?"

The Slayer cocked her head while continuing her approach, using her heightened senses for a few seconds. She eventually replied, "Nobody's talking in there, and I can't hear a television. There's no indication of anyone moving around inside, but they could be really quiet or just taking a nap. The sound of the surf isn't helping, either. Maybe when we get closer."

Xander grunted in acknowledgment. Nevertheless, when they came nearer to the seemingly-deserted house, he had to comment dubiously, "This could still be a wild-goose chase, Buffy. You really can't think of any reason why your ex would be here in the first place?"

An unhappy shrug of her shoulders now came from the blonde woman, along with the reluctant answer. "He didn't say anything to me about this spot when we were together, Xan. Brandon isn't even from here, anyway. He was born and raised in Massachusetts as an only kid, until he survived a traffic accident that killed his parents when he was in high school. Brandon went to live with family friends in Ohio and eventually got a college scholarship to Cleveland, which was when I met him. After that, he never mentioned a single word about anywhere in Maine to me."

This monologue lasted long enough for the pair to reach the front porch. When Xander was about to place a foot upon the first tread of the steps leading upwards to the front door, while also opening his mouth to begin commenting on what he'd just learned, this man abruptly heard an embarrassed squeak coming from the woman at his side. Equally suddenly, Buffy stopped in her tracks.

Xander also stumbled to a halt, nearly tripping onto the porch in his surprise. He hastily turned his head to observe Buffy standing there and deeply blushing. Meeting his eye, the Slayer mumbled sheepishly, "Someone's at home. They just flushed the toilet in there."

"Oh, okay," said a nonplussed Xander, who naturally hadn't heard anything. Glancing at the front door, the man tentatively waved a hand towards that weathered panel, suggesting, "Well, shall we….?"

Looking as if she'd rather be anywhere else at this exact moment, Buffy unwillingly nodded. The pair now stepped up to the porch and went forward to stood in front of the door. For a few moments, neither moved, until a resigned Xander then reached out to grasp the door knocker mounted at shoulder level. This was an oversized iron replica of an acorn the size of a golf ball attached to a metal chain dangling from a hook screwed into the door. Holding this replica of an oak nut in his fingers, Xander smartly rapped this piece of metal several times against the small square of iron nailed to the front of the door which provided a striking surface for the knocker.

Buffy momentarily winced at the noise, which sounded to her sensitive ears to be the equivalent of exploding firecrackers. Still, this sound would clearly be audible to anyone inside. After Xander let go of the door knocker, both of the Scoobies now waited to meet the house's resident.

With any luck, this would be Brandon Martin himself, who could then be carefully informed about the reasons for their unexpected visit, given a new copy of the Slayer's already filled-out divorce papers, and then he would be invited to sign these. Afterwards, an absolutely relieved Buffy and Xander would then swiftly take their leave, and hopefully the entire encounter would have taken place without too much awkwardness.

As Buffy reflected optimistically about the coming events, she and Xander kept a watch on the double set of window panels on either side of the front door. These were composed of thick, frosted glass blocks placed in vertical columns, to give someone inside the house a chance to become aware of any visitors on the porch while still maintaining the householder's privacy. Sure enough, after a few seconds, both dimly saw a person in the house slowly walking down the inside hall towards the door, evidently summoned by Xander's knocking.

However, neither of them, not even Buffy, could perceive through the cloudy glass blocks exactly whom this was, since the Slayer's superhuman sight did have its limits. Although Buffy could see perfectly in the dark and she could effortlessly make out from a hundred yards away a quarter-page newspaper ad for a shoe sale at the local mall if this paper was held up for her to read at the opposite end zone of a football field, x-ray vision wasn't part of the package. Buffy waited nervously for the door to open, shifting back and forth on her feet.

Xander was all too conscious of his fiancée's edginess, which was shared by the one-eyed man himself. He wasn't looking forward to this, either. Frankly, Xander would have been more than happy if Buffy had never met Brandon Martin in the first place, much less married that guy, to then quickly divorce him (even if that hadn't really been done in the first place, resulting in their trip here). All which happened without the New Council troubleshooter's knowledge, since Xander had been in the middle of a major crisis in Africa which rendered him temporarily out of touch with the rest of the Scoobies. It wasn't until much later when Willow finally told him about it, that Xander found out his blonde friend from high school had gotten married. This man hadn't taken that little bit of news all too well.

Well, the usual Scooby Gang bizarre luck then happened, what with the Key and the One Who Sees soon being sent to another dimension to retrieve a stolen magical artifact. After succeeding in this, Xander and Dawn also returned to their Cleveland home in amazed possession of a black-haired, green-eyed, absolutely adorable baby boy named Harry James Potter. Who'd swiftly captured Buffy Summers' heart while she recovered from the car crash that had caused the loss of her own child.

What had been even more of a miracle to Xander was this Slayer's soon confessing to him what she'd finally realized. Ever since a young man had fallen off his skateboard in front of herself, Buffy had always loved the son of two drunks, a demon-girlfriend magnet, a permanent fan of Twinkies and the most garish Hawaiian shirts possible. Someone who'd never dreamed the most wonderful girl in the world would ever think twice about him.

*Right,* instantly decided Xander in the privacy of his thoughts, as he stood before the beach cottage door now being cautiously opened. *If that guy's in there, he's gonna sign the divorce papers, or else. I'm not kidding-*

"Yes?" was guardedly spoken through the door opened just a crack, with an equally wary eye peering through this narrow space. The individual inside the house regarded with more than a hint of disquiet the scary-looking stranger on the porch who had both a black eyepatch and a very intense expression presently upon his features.

Opening his mouth to speak, Xander's first words, whatever they might have been, were immediately interrupted by the incredulous sniff loudly performed by Buffy. She then vociferously demanded in an equally disbelieving voice, "_Brandon?!_"

The gaze of the eye peering through the door gap instantly shifted to where the previously unnoticed woman standing out of their line of sight was located. This eye widened in abrupt shock as a prompt identification was made. Right after, the door started to hastily slam shut. Even if he'd actually wanted to stop this, a stunned Xander couldn't have possibly gotten to the door before it completely closed.

Buffy had no such trouble. Using her Slayer speed, the blonde blurred forward to slap the palm of her hand against the door swinging shut. In the next instant, Buffy slowly shoved forward this panel. A flabbergasted Xander heard coming from behind the door a muffled yelp of alarm, accompanied by a soft scraping sound. A former Sunnydale resident promptly identified as the feet of the house's occupant helplessly skidding along the hallway floor while being pushed back.

A gaping Xander continued to watch in utter disbelief, with him seeing inside the cottage through the now nearly-ajar door a dark figure letting go of this panel, to then spin around and hastily shuffle away down the hallway.

Things got _really_ strange then.

Pushing the door completely open, Buffy darted into the house in her pursuit of this fleeing person, leaving Xander behind on the porch and wondering exactly when things had gone disastrously wrong. Knowing they were only getting into even more trouble, Xander still went inside the small house after his fiancée anyway. He took the few strides necessary to pass down the central hallway to enter the rear living room of the beach cottage.

Xander got there just in time to hear Buffy exclaim with utter dismay, "Brandon, what _happened_ to you?"


	5. Chapter 5

While he gawked at the bizarre scene presently taking place before him in the beach cottage's living room, the one-eyed man's thoughts promptly flashed back to the past.

* * *

Xander Harris had never met Brandon Martin, not even once. That other guy's entire relationship with Buffy Summers in Cleveland - their college dates, their sudden wedding, and their equally sudden separation - had all occurred while the California native was in the middle of a serious crisis with his New Council team in Africa which had kept Xander completely out of touch with the rest of the Scoobies during this period.

It wasn't until much later when Xander had learned about Buffy's marriage and everything else, including her unexpected pregnancy. He then reacted to the shocking news by promptly withdrawing from everyone in the New Council founding group, even Willow and Dawn. Refusing to accept this, these worried women eventually coaxed their grim friend into transferring back home from Africa to the Cleveland location of the Jesse McNally Academy for Exceptional Young Men. Once there, the witch and the Key devoted their full attention into making Xander behave and act again like the easygoing man they considered to be no less than their older brother. After a week or so of this, it seemed to be working, much to the relief of the female pair. Xander was more like his former self, even though he flatly refused to talk about Buffy or the guy she'd married, even going so far as to abruptly leave the room whenever Dawn or Willow tried to bring up the subject.

In the middle of all this, Xander and Dawn were told that they needed to immediately go on a mission together to another dimension in order to recover a stolen magical artifact. Feeling his spirits rise at the possibility of finally getting back into action and doing something interesting, a more cheerful Xander accompanied Dawn into one of the New Council's main storerooms at the basement level of the Janna Kalderash School for Exceptional Young Women. There, they were to stock up for their trip between realities.

The first thing done by both in this storeroom as they stood side-by-side in front of a bare table set in the middle was utterly prosaic, but quite necessary. While she went first, Xander glanced over to watch Dawn clean out her wallet just taken from her purse. She dumped into a tray placed upon the tabletop all the stuff - cash, credit cards, car license, New Council identification - that she wouldn't need or couldn't risk bringing along in the other dimension they were about to visit. What then caught the man's single eye were several small photos among the rest of the wallet discards. With mild curiosity, Xander stuck out a finger and he started to poke through the pictures.

At that exact moment, Dawn was looking down at her own fingers while she slipped her new identity cards (superbly forged by the busy little bees of the New Council's support staff) into their proper places inside her wallet. The young woman's attention was drawn from this at the gruff exclamation by Xander in a very strange tone of awed sadness, "Hey, I didn't know you still had this!"

"What?" asked a puzzled Dawn. She gazed at where Xander was staring at one particular photo of hers in the tray. This showed a much-younger Dawn clasping hands with a pretty blonde woman as they stood together in front of a small store having on its upper front a sign reading "THE MAGIC BOX". Both of these pictured girls were happily smiling at the man taking their picture, who was himself years later now wonderingly regarding this older and rather worn photograph.

Oh, that," acknowledged Dawn suddenly remembering how she'd come to possess this picture. There was a hushed silence in the room for a few moments when Dawn then had to blink away her abrupt tears. She finally managed in a somewhat choked voice, "Yeah, I've always kept it, ever since you gave it to me back then, Xan. I had it in my wallet when we were on that last bus out of Sunnydale, so it didn't get lost there like everything else."

Xander gently stroked the tip of his finger against the front of the photo, at the exact spot where Anya Jenkins' face was showing rare joy for this former vengeance demon. Just barely managing to keep his own voice from breaking, Xander appealed, "Dawnie, can I have a copy of this? I- I never guessed there was stuff left showing Anya-"

"Oh, Xander, of course you can!" burst from Dawn, as she actually started crying now. Between her sobs, the girl managed to gasp, "I just thought you had something, anything at all, instead of nothing of her! It's so-" At that point, Dawn was interrupted by being pulled into a fierce hug, as she continued to weep onto the man's shirtfront.

Xander rubbed his cheek against Dawn's forehead, as he gazed off into the distance and tried to swallow past the unexpected lump in his throat. The young woman began to subside into faint sniffles while still in Xander's embrace, when this man quickly looked startled. He then gently pulled himself away from Dawn, holding the girl by her shoulders. Blinking at him with her tear-stained features at this unanticipated action, Dawn's bewilderment only increased by seeing the delighted smile on Xander's face.

Especially when he crowed loudly, "Dawn, lemme show you something!"

Right after that, Xander hurriedly let go of Dawn, leaving her standing there and watching with complete befuddlement as her friend reached back behind himself and yanked out his own wallet. Flipping this case open, Xander now quickly rummaged through various pockets, until he tenderly slid out from his wallet a certain item. Holding the small laminated piece of paper like if it was the most precious thing in the world, Xander offered this to a very confused Dawn, who took that unknown object without actually thinking about it.

A second later, Dawn wasn't even bothering to think. Pure emotion now consumed her, consisting of both joy and grief to the maximum extent possible. In Dawn's hands, Joyce Summers smiled up from her snapshot at the daughter she'd never had in real life. The Key once again dissolved in tears at the sight of the only remembrance she'd ever come across since Sunnydale's collapse of the woman, who after her natural shock, had then unhesitantly accepted Dawn Summers as her second child.

"Xander, where'd you get this?" whispered Dawn. She carefully placed the small picture onto the tabletop, lest she accidentally let her tears fall upon it and ruin this priceless memento.

A big, warm arm wrapped around Dawn's shoulders while the man pulled her once more against his body. Xander next contentedly rumbling from deep within his chest, "It was just a couple of months after the Scooby Gang got started, when we were still in our second year at Sunnydale High. I dropped in at your old house one day - though you weren't really around then, you know-"

Leaning back against Xander, Dawn just rolled her eyes. She uttered an impatient grunt of acknowledgement to make him get on with it, instead of bringing up again all that stupid business with those meddling monks and their memory-altering spell.

"Anyway," the man with the eye patch hastily continued, "Your mom was in the kitchen ready to go shopping, and there was a camera on the counter. Joyce told me she'd meant to have the film in that camera developed, except there were still a couple of unexposed shots left. So, I just grabbed the camera and started snapping away at your mom. She took it pretty well, as you can see from that picture, which she gave to me later after one of her milder dressing-downs. I didn't mind that at all, Dawnster. It was really nice having her scolding me like that, and so was the picture, which I stuck away in my wallet for the next couple of years."

Hearing this, Dawn peered over Xander's arm wrapped around her, to check out his other hand dangling at the man's side, gripping a large, black wallet. Frowning, Dawn commented, "That's not your old wallet."

"What? Oh, yeah, it finally fell to pieces after a while in Africa. I was given a new one- Wait a sec. How'd you know about that?" came from a curious Xander, looking down at the back of Dawn's head, just in time to see the tops of her ears abruptly turn a bright crimson.

After a lengthy silence which literally begged to be filled, Dawn then reluctantly spoke, while still refusing to turn her head to meet Xander's inquisitive stare. "It, uh, was during my klepto phase, all right? I lifted it from your pants one day at the Magic- _Don't you dare laugh, you big jerk!_"

It was much too late for that. As she irately slipped out of Xander's half-hug, Dawn then whirled around to stand there in front of him. Fists resting on her hips, she glowered at the guffawing man, with his own arms now blissfully wrapped around himself. The young woman then snapped, "Yeah, yuk it up! Anya yelled at me the second you left, since _she_ spotted what I did right away! For punishment, I had to clean the bathroom there every weekend for the next month!"

Xander managed to get himself back under control long enough to snigger, "I remember it now, Featherfingers Dawn. Anya caught me later at our apartment and handed back my wallet, which I didn't even know was gone! I was so relieved about that, we spent the next hour playing 'How The Rugged Carpenter Rewards The Honest Shopgirl-'"

"Not listening! Not listening!" chanted Dawn, as she hurriedly stuck her fingers in her ears, started hopping up and down, and began singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' horribly off-key to herself.

Excepting for absently wincing at several points during Dawn's butchering of that tune, Xander's attention was mainly devoted to thoughtfully examining his wallet. He turned it over in his hands, musing out loud to his companion once the young woman thankfully stopped singing.

"Kinda weird, isn't it, that none of us after the big Sunnydale cave-in ever considered we might have pictures in our wallets that the other Scoobies didn't?"

Becoming a bit more serious, Dawn pointed out, "I guess we were too busy back then, plus our wallet photos were so familiar to us that we never gave them a second thought. Until now."

Dawn hesitated for a second, before asking hopefully, "Uh, Xan, do you have any more pictures of Mom?"

Xander ruefully shook his head. At seeing Dawn's disappointment, he then amiably handed over his wallet to her. "Go ahead, Dawnie, check 'em out. Anything you like, I'll make a copy for you."

"Great!" happily said Dawn. She started to open his wallet, until a puzzled expression suddenly crossed her face. The Key then looked down in surprise at the odd feel of the leather case in her hands. Rubbing her fingertips harder against the unfamiliar texture, Dawn asked curiously, "What's this made from, anyway? It doesn't feel like cowhide."

Xander casually answered, "Hippopotamus."

Dawn's mouth fell open in disbelief, as she stared down at the wallet in her grasp. "You mean those adorable animals floating in the water with their cute ears flapping-"

"_No!_"

Xander's pained groan abruptly cut off Dawn's enthusiastic description. When the baffled young woman now lifted her eyebrows towards him in expectation of an immediate explanation for her friend's sudden change of mood, Xander dourly went on. "Yeah, Dawnie, hippos do that, but they're in _no_ way any kind of cute, no matter how many times you've seen 'Fantasia'! In real life, they're about the most dangerous animal in Africa."

"You can't be serious!"

Xander solemnly nodded, as he further assured her, "Honest Injun, Dawn. Look, in the wild there, you've got the adults who weight a couple of tons each and can move faster than a human through dense brush at the water's edge when they go inland from rivers and lakes to feed. And since hippos usually do that at night, anybody who gets trapped between them and the water during their trips is likely to get trampled to death. Especially if it's a female with her calves. Hippos are just as dangerous in the water, too. They can swim pretty well despite all their weight, and they don't like being disturbed. Those huge mouths of theirs might look hilarious yawning wide open, but even if they don't eat meat, their big teeth are more than capable of biting crocs in half. Wood and metal boats have been chomped into splinters by them, too. Nope, in Africa, sensible - and even idiotic - people leave hippos alone."

Listening in growing wonder to that earnest speech, Dawn also watched a very aggrieved look now flash across Xander's features as he finished the last sentence of his discourse. Her interest perking up at this, Dawn commented, "You sound like you've got personal experience there, Xan. C'mon, spill it, every one of the embarrassing details."

"_I_ had nothing to do with it!" snapped an annoyed Xander.

As he glowered at a fascinated Dawn, the one-eyed man grumpily continued, "It was a few months back, before I dropped out of touch. Me and my Slayers, all four of us, we'd tracked down and finished off a demon who liked to snack on nature park tourists in Kenya. It ended up with us spending a few days at Hippo Point on Lake Naivasha, relaxing there with good food and hot showers. Except that wasn't enough for Khadijah, Roberta, and Ngina, oh, no! They just _had_ to come up with a private contest between them, over who could sneak the closest to one of the wild animals hanging around the place!"

An astonished Dawn had her jaw drop. She gazed in dumbfoundment at where Xander was standing and resentfully carrying on with his grievances. "Of course, once the girls all got bored at getting away with nearly giving an elephant a heart attack by catching it napping and then tweaking the tip of its trunk, those dear little monsters just had to escalate! No matter what I threatened later, none of 'em would ever confess who'd managed to win their competition, even though in a dozen households throughout the world, there's a photo album filled with snapshots of a very miserable, full-grown King of the Beasts out on an African plain. I'm telling you, _nothing_ looks more humiliated than a five-hundred pound lion with his mane neatly trimmed into a Mohawk hairdo!"

At that point, Dawn had to lean sideways against the edge of the storeroom table to keep from sliding to the floor, clutching Xander's wallet to her chest as she shrieked with laughter. Over the noise of her hilarity, she heard the Watcher huffily finish his absurd story: "When we left that place, I was driving our Land Rover as fast as it'd go, yelling over my shoulder at those three brats in the back seat giggling to themselves. In the middle of all this, a wallet- _that_ one," Xander nodded at what Dawn was still holding in her hands, "-came flying over the seat to drop into my lap. In her most snooty tone, Roberta lectured me for acting like such a wanker when they'd gone to all the trouble of getting me a new wallet made from hippo skin from the gift shop there in memory of our visit, especially since they'd been careful enough to stay far away from the real thing during their whole game!"

Ceasing at last, Xander then irritably folded his arms across his chest and he frowned off into the distance, until he was abruptly gathered up by Hurricane Dawn wrapping her own arms around him. This young woman chortled during her swift embrace, "You miss them, don't you, Xan?"

Looking down into Dawn's sparking face lifted up to gaze back at him in her glee, Xander finally allowed himself a slow, wide grin. He admitted, "Yeah, they - all my Slayers, the Watchers, everyone in the New Council there - they drove me crazy at times, but I loved it, too."

"Good," firmly said Dawn, disentangling herself from a surprised Xander. She stepped back to look him straight in the eye. "I'm gonna drag out of you every one of the stories from your time there in Africa, mister, when we're on our mission together. Now, let's get back to preparing. Let me check out the pictures in your wallet, and you can do the same with mine. After our job's over, we can hold a Scooby Gang party and swap pictures with each other. Does that sound okay?"

"Sure, Dawnie," beamed Xander, as he headed back to the storeroom table past the younger Summers sister, to at last finish his inspection of the photographs in her wallet.

Smiling after her friend, Dawn started her own investigation of Xander's wallet in her hands. When she examined the first photo there, which showed a young boy at the center of a trio, with both arms over the shoulders of the other adolescents at his sides, Dawn became engrossed in studying how happy all three of the children looked. A pre-teen Xander, Willow, and some unknown other boy grinned at the camera in the photo booth taking their picture while they tightly squeezed together in this cramped stall.

The Key was concentrating on trying to figure out who this stranger was, rather than paying any attention to a niggling thought in her mind which was presently trying to remind Dawn of something concerning a certain picture in her own wallet that Xander-

"Huh!"

This impulsive, unhappy grunt of sheer surprise brought Dawn's head snapping back up. She stared in confusion at where Xander was standing frozen, caught in his posture of looking down at the pictures scattered along the tabletop. A baffled Dawn followed Xander's gaze. The young woman abruptly felt her stomach drop clear to the bottom of her boots, as she recognized the specific photograph which had evidently caught this man's notice. Dawn then began mentally cursing herself for not remembering sooner regarding that picture, but she hadn't meant for this to happen in the first place!

Not knowing what else to do or say without possibly making matters worse, Dawn just miserably stood there. She was as frozen as Xander himself, who was numbly continuing his one-eyed scrutiny of Buffy Summers' wedding portrait.

She was in pure white, the stunned observer immediately noted, the exact same color as the bouquet of roses that Buffy was clutching in the picture. Other than this, Xander couldn't have further described the long dress that the Slayer was presently wearing, except that it had lots of lace stuff covering it. Rising from the back collar of her dress, more lace framed Buffy's joyous face, with this delighted expression now capturing Xander's attention. He'd never before seen her so glad, while the young woman in the photograph lovingly looked up into the face of the man at her side.

There wasn't the slightest sound in the storage room. A heartsick Dawn watched how Xander's remaining eye then flickered across the picture to study Buffy's new husband.

After an eternity, Xander had to admit to himself the first thing which came to mind to describe Brandon Martin was… The guy was tall. Or, compared to Buffy, he wasn't really all that far above average height, but, well, otherwise this dude just wasn't so…special. Trim in his tuxedo, but not all that many muscles. A pleasant face, okay to look at, but again, not extraordinarily handsome. The simple fact was, in virtually all of Buffy Summers' previous relationships, the other men in her life then had been well beyond mundane in all physical aspects.

The man in the picture, the one returning Buffy's happy gaze with his own elated expression, he was _normal._

* * *

Months later, as he gawked at Brandon Martin feebly struggling in Buffy's grasp, a disbelieving Xander had to mentally echo the Slayer's shocked comment: *What the _hell_ happened to this guy?*


	6. Chapter 6

Brandon Martin was still tall. Or at least, he presently overtopped a horrified Buffy Summers looking up while she tentatively shook the emaciated man being held in her cautious grip, as if she feared actually breaking him in half. There seemed to be a distinct possibility of this, given that her gaunt ex-husband now mysteriously appeared to have somehow lost enough weight for the small woman to in fact right now be heavier than him.

Buffy hastily let go of the man when Brandon suddenly began to hoarsely cough, sounding as if he was about to hack up a lung at any moment. Staggering back a step, the still-coughing, near-skeletal man wearing a knit cap on his head and clad in his tracksuit which hung loosely from a body lacking any trace of surplus flesh now uttered a deep groan of pain. He started to rub with his opposite hands the aching parts of his arms where Buffy had just clutched him.

Both Xander and Buffy just stood there in their shared astonishment while they then watched Brandon gaspingly shuffle over to the nearest armchair in the living room and collapse into this. The now-seated man instantly grabbed the nearest pill bottle of the dozen or so scattered atop the small table next to the chair. Frantically shaking out two large, white capsules into the palm of his hand, Brandon popped these pills into his mouth right away, choking them down without water.

That finally brought Buffy out of her shock, as she exclaimed, "Brandon, are you _sick?!_"

The faint wheezing sounds coming from this addressed person in his chair promptly stopped. The man's gaze flickered from staring vacantly ahead into actually regarding Buffy. A look of pure incredulity now flickered into existence upon his wasted features. Brandon's yellowish-grey skin was stretched tightly over the bones of his face while he continued to stare in sheer disbelief at the woman standing uncomfortably before himself. After several more moments of unsure silence, Brandon finally spoke to his visitors in a hesitant mutter, "You don't know- Why are _you_ here, Buffy? And who's _he?_"

With those last words, Xander blinked at suddenly being the target of an unfathomable gaze from the seated man, whose former whites of his eyes had changed into the same yellowish color of his entire exposed skin. Brandon continued to stare at the unknown intruder inside his home. An increasingly ill-at-ease Xander took a few steps forward to stop by Buffy. The unnerved Slayer at once grasped Xander's right hand in her own, and she drew in a deep breath. The current situation wasn't anything like she'd expected. Any kind of previous plans on how things might have happened in explaining to Brandon why they'd come here had just completely gone out the window.

Caught absolutely off-guard, Buffy thoughtlessly blurted out, "Brandon, this is Xander Harris, and we're getting married. But we found out a few days ago that my divorce from you never went through, so we came here to have you sign the divorce papers again. I didn't know you were sick…"

Buffy trailed off at seeing Brandon's suddenly blank face now looking directly at her hand holding Xander's. The man in his chair slowly lifted his head, to impassively regard both of his uninvited visitors standing before him, for what seemed an eternity. Finally, in a very calm voice, Brandon announced, "Oh, I'm not sick."

While Buffy and Xander now watched in their total consternation, Brandon then slowly reached up with his right hand to grasp the edge of his knit cap. This man next abruptly yanked it off his head, as with a savage grin which turned his completely bald skull into a perfect death's head, he brutally stated, "I'm _dying._"

* * *

A minute or so later, a truly subdued Buffy was huddled against the sofa across the room from Brandon who enigmatically watched her and Xander sharing this quilt-lined couch. Directing his frankly scathing words right towards Buffy, who flinched at every one of these, Brandon bitterly explained, "Stage four adult leukemia. I was fine a few months ago, but now it's terminal."

"Wh- what about treatment?" Buffy hopelessly asked.

A brusque bark of pure black humor followed this inquiry, along with a trembling hand that waved itself along Brandon's cadaverous form,. He sardonically informed her, "I look like _this_ now due to all the radiation treatments and chemotherapy. They didn't work."

Xander cleared his throat, and joining in the conversation for the first time, he risked, "How, uh, long do you have?"

Brandon didn't seem to be very offended at this blunt question, easily answering, "A couple of weeks, at the most." He continued meeting Xander's suddenly strained expression over hearing that. Brandon next allowed a caustic sneer to twist his lips, as he went on in a derisive tone to the other man, "Hey, fella, you might want to shift over on that couch."

Even Buffy was jerked out of her misery at that bizarre suggestion, while she and Xander now stared across the room at the dying individual balefully observing them both. It was her fiancé who managed to bewilderedly ask first, "Uh, why?"

Contemptuously regarding Buffy, Brandy answered the other man without taking his gaze away from his ex-wife seated there on the sofa. "Because if you don't move out of the way, when she bolts for the front door in the next couple of seconds, she'll trample you in her flat-out run to get as far away from here as possible."

"_Brandon!_" loudly exclaimed a shocked Buffy.

A scornful "What?" was her former husband's response.

Brandon then mockingly went on, nodding at the startled man seated across from himself. "I just thought I'd give him some advance warning, unless you've actually changed since we knew each other. I seriously doubt that, though. So, Zanner, or whatever your name is, here's my advice: don't count on any promises she makes. If you're really looking to have something special and lasting with a woman, dump Buffy Summers and try again with practically anybody else, because that liar there doesn't know the meaning of commitment."

Seated side-by-side on the sofa, the faces of both visitors to the beach cottage abruptly changed color at hearing this last cynical comment. Buffy's features turned white in sheer humiliation, while a glaring Xander had a brick-red countenance as he snapped back at the insolent man in his own armchair. "Listen, you jerk, you've gone too far! You don't know the slightest bit what Buffy's really like!"

An icy glare was bestowed upon Xander by Brandon, who then stiffly replied, "Being told that you're just a big mistake is _normal_ for her to say to someone?"

Buffy cringed at the hurtful memories that statement had suddenly brought back. She reluctantly joined in the heated conversation, appealing to her ex-husband, "Brandon, I never meant to upset you then. I was just trying to explain what I did wrong-"

"_I!_ I! I! I!" snapped Brandon, his gaunt face writhing in immense rage, which was more than enough to strike dumb the others in the room.

Breathing hard, the dying man then fiercely glared at a pale Buffy, as he spat out, "For you, it's always I! I decided to get married! I decided it was a mistake! I decided I needed to leave! I decided to never contact my husband until I decided I needed something from him! I decided to bring my next husband with me then!"

Sinking back into his chair, Brandon gasped for breath. The Scooby Gang members simply sat motionless on the couch in their absolute mortification. Yet, even worse was to come for Buffy and Xander.

Brandon abruptly spoke again, much more softly and in a tone of true anguish totally different from his recent rage, as he stared past his visitors. "Believe it or not, Buffy, I got your divorce papers. I also got another message then, a call from the hospital about your car accident. They were following the notification procedures for spouses, so because the hospital didn't know we were separated, I got told by them about everything. How close you came to dying. How…our, our baby _did_ die."

Still not looking at his shocked listeners, Brandon then began to slowly cry. With tears dripping down his hollow cheeks, he husked, "I got found a few minutes later by one of our apartment neighbors, who came by and saw the front door was open. He found me flat on the floor by the phone. I got rushed to the emergency room, and then I learned I had leukemia when they checked me over. I…didn't really care about anything after that, just going through the motions during all the treatments, until it was confirmed my cancer had spread. So, I came here, to die. Then you showed up."

There was now an excruciating silence in the room for the next several moments. Brandon finally ended this, wearily sighing, "Go away, both of you. Just…go away, Buffy. There's no point in me signing anything. Our marriage's going to end soon enough, anyway, in the traditional words you insisted at our wedding: _Till death do us part._"


	7. Chapter 7

They were almost back to their car after wretchedly leaving the beach cottage behind themselves, when Buffy stumbled, and pitched forward. Xander had been expecting something like this, staying ready and watching in concern as he followed the young woman, walking directly being the numb Slayer while she headed down the road away from the small house by the ocean and its dying tenant. He immediately lunged forward, grabbing his fiancée by her arms, as her legs collapsed. Continuing to hold onto a limp Buffy, Xander carefully lowered himself to the ground, sitting there tailor-fashion while guiding Buffy into his embrace. She curled up against him, pressing her face against his chest, and Buffy began to wail in her immeasurable grief.

Xander just stared ahead over the head of the sobbing woman, watching the uncaring ocean in front of them, until he began to rock his body back and forth, tenderly stroking Buffy's hair as she wept. No words or other sounds of comfort were able to pass through the massive lump in Xander's throat. He soon began to also cry, tears dripping from his single eye.

This man's sorrow was not only for the woman he loved, but also for whom they'd left behind, alone in his house. There wasn't any anger or resentment presently felt by Xander towards Brandon Martin, not even for the new anguish that person had just inflicted upon Buffy.

Just a few minutes ago, Brandon had behaved far better than anyone else might have reasonably expected. It was Xander and Buffy who'd done the unpardonable, blundering into the whole situation back there. They'd intruded into someone's most private moments, while he was facing the end of his life and determinedly trying to get through this final journey in a manner as dignified as possible.

This wasn't anything like Xander had ever encountered before in Sunnydale, and after. This founding member of the Scooby Gang had numerous experiences with death over that time, which usually involved fighting evil monsters ranging from single combat with vampires and other demons, to the possibility of a full-scale global apocalypse brought about by the standard supernatural master villain. In any case, during all this, the defenders of the Sunnydale Hellmouth, who would later go on to become the New Council, at least knew that if they did get killed during those events, it'd probably be quick and relatively painless.

None of them in the past, when they'd all been high school students patrolling their hometown, had ever considered they might succumb from a lingering death involving serious injuries or illness. Even later on, when this actually happened to one of their own, Cordelia Chase's slow passing from life while in a coma had mainly taken place without her former acquaintances' learning of this.

Still sitting on the ground with a weeping Buffy in his arms, Xander became even more mournful. He again felt a tremendous wave of guilt sweep over himself over the way things had turned out with his former girlfriend once known as Queen C. Now, his new love had to deal with her own remorse about the prolonged end of someone who'd once been in the closest of relationships with herself. It had to be hurting Buffy even more than the whole thing with her old friend Billy Fordham from Hemery High so many years ago.

Back then, that guy had come to Sunnydale in a desperate attempt at being changed into a vampire in order to avoid dying from a brain tumor. In the process, Ford, as he was known, had betrayed Buffy and wound up being staked by this Slayer after Spike turned the young man. While Xander glumly reflected upon this, he missed how the woman that he was consoling had finally stopped crying, to then shakily announce a brief declaration.

"Xander, I'm staying."

Startled, Xander looked down at the tear-stained face resolutely examining him with Buffy settled quietly in his embrace. The man's immediate response consisted of the first thing which came to mind, as he worriedly pointed out, "Buffy, he just told us to go away. I think Brandon meant it-"

Buffy sniffled deeply, as she then acknowledged, "Yeah, but…Xander, I have to at least _ask_ him, now that I've had a little time to recover. If, if Brandon still says he doesn't want me here, I promise I'll go. But I can't afford to pass up this last chance, not when I missed everything else!"

Xander opened his mouth not really sure what to say about this, until his face abruptly crumpled and his lips clamped shut. This man's expression slowly shifting into accepting sadness. A concerned Buffy reached up with her hand to stroke her fiancé's cheek as she anxiously asked, "What's wrong, Xan?"

It took a few moments for a reply to come in Xander's sorrowful whisper, "I would've stayed with Cordy. Even if there wasn't anything I could've done, I still want to have been there, by her hospital bed. Just…so that she wouldn't have been alone."

This time, it was Buffy who embraced Xander, as he leaned forward and sobbed on her shoulder. Holding the weeping man, the Slayer shed several more tears while also remembering that prickly young girl in Sunnydale who'd helped the Scooby Gang, often while loudly giving everyone in Ms. Chase's presence a good piece of her mind at the same time.

In the end, Buffy and Xander shakily got back upon their feet in the middle of the gravel road, grasping each other for support. They continued to hold hands while they uncertainly regarded each other. Xander was the first one to speak, as he apprehensively questioned, "Uh, how do we do this?"

Swallowing nervously, Buffy then mumbled, "I'll go back, and…ask Brandon if I can stay. If he says no, then….that's it. We leave and return to Cleveland, to…wait. There'll be sooner or later some kind of obituary or other way to finally know."

Impulsively, Xander slipped his right hand out of Buffy's grip to cup her cheek, as the woman gratefully closed her eyes in acceptance of his sympathy. However, she also had to add something else, in hope he'd further agree. "Xan, I've got to do that on my own. I…don't think it'll work if you're there."

There was a frozen moment amongst the pair, until Buffy fearfully opened her eyes, to then see Xander's bleak face, accompanied by this man's shoulder's slumping in despondent acquiescence. Buffy's heart further broke at her lover's forlorn voice, "Yeah, Buffy, I'll stay out here. So, if he says yes…?"

Seizing upon this opportunity to distract herself with details, Buffy doggedly outlined her impulsive plan, "You wait here, by the car. I'll come out to the porch and wave if that happens. You leave behind my suitcase and take the car back."

Agonized glances were then traded between the couple, until Buffy managed to continue. "I've got my phone, so I can call if anything changes. You go home to Harry-"

"Wait," Xander interrupted, as he suddenly realized a major objection to all this. "What do I tell anyone there who asks where you are?"

Buffy gulped. She recognized Xander had an actual point.

Thinking hard, Buffy finally declared, "This is our secret. Mine, yours, and our family. Only Dawn, Giles, Willow, and Faith get told. Otherwise, spread the word that I'm on Council business and will be out of touch from everybody for a few…weeks."

Slowly nodding in his understanding, Xander agreed, "Yeah, that'll work."

A hint of bemusement came with his next query. "Uh, Faith?"

The right corner of Buffy's mouth momentarily quirked upwards in the faintest of humor. The blonde woman reminded Xander, "She's more than proved herself to be one of us now, unlike back in Sunnydale when we were too stupid to welcome her."

Buffy became more serious, as she went on. "Besides, the only way that I'm going to leave here, before it's….over, is for a full-blown apocalypse. I want you to tell Faith, right from me, that I trust the last called Slayer to know if that needs to be done, sending for me."

A flicker of actual amusement also played over Xander's face, despite the whole somber situation. "You know that'll really make her day in spite of everything, right? Faith's always craved your good opinion."

A very dry look was then sent towards the man. Buffy performed a solemn half-shrug of her shoulders. "Well, tell her from me too, that I _mean_ it."

The Slayer's face now became severe, when she warned, "I also want you to mean it, when you lay down the law to the others. I'll keep in touch by phone with you and them all, if it's necessary, but that's as far as it goes. If Brandon says I can stay, then I want absolute privacy for us. Nobody visits, nobody calls. The only exceptions, like I said before, are the world-ending stuff, and one other thing."

Xander didn't waste any time puzzling out that last statement. He immediately spoke a single name.

"Willow."

Buffy nodded, a frantic hope abruptly blossoming upon her features. "Maybe she can help with her magic, or if she personally can't, Wils might know someone who can. Please, Xander-"

"I promise, Buffy."

After giving this guarantee that the most powerful witch in the world would soon be hard at work researching magical healing, Xander desperately gathered up his lover in a last extreme hug which might have caused bodily injury to any woman that wasn't a Slayer, lifting Buffy right off her feet. She clung back to him, as both people tried to cram into their memories the final seconds they'd be with each other for the next several weeks, or until a life finally came to its end.


	8. Chapter 8

Ten days later, Buffy sat in the dark inside the rear living room, contemplating the beauty of the full moon casting its bright light over the calm Atlantic Ocean outside, only a hundred feet away from the beach cottage. Occasionally, the woman in her armchair glanced over at the bed which had been moved into the room earlier today, making sure the man lying in there was still peacefully sleeping. Indeed, Brandon's slumber was evident enough to Buffy's heightened senses through his steady, if labored, breathing. Both of them had silently shared the evening together while they watched through the back picture window the serene scene beyond, when night fell and the moon rose over the still waters. Brandon then finally went to sleep, leaving Buffy alone in her somber mood. She mentally marked off not only one more day of being here, but yet another day in which her husband hadn't spoken a single word to the Slayer throughout her entire stay here.

* * *

That little bit of strangeness had started right at the moment when Buffy walked back into the cottage's living room and nervously asked the dying man still sitting there if she could stay. Instead of another angry confrontation which the blonde woman had been secretly dreading, Brandon had merely stared blankly at her for what seemed an eternity. Inn the end, her husband gave a supremely indifferent shrug, and next he'd arisen from his armchair to shuffle past a startled Buffy. The man went into the hallway and then to what appeared to be his bedroom, quietly closing the door behind himself.

Buffy had stood there in her sheer bewilderment for a full minute, unsure if she'd actually been granted permission to stay by Brandon. Finally, after assuring herself that he hadn't in fact told her "No," Buffy tiptoed down the hallway to the front door. She opened this to step outside on the porch. Peering down the brick path at where their car was parked, the Slayer easily saw Xander waiting by the vehicle and anxiously looking back at herself. Gulping at what she had to do, Buffy lifted up her right hand to wave at her fiancé, mentally cringing at seeing his face abruptly fall at the signal that they now needed to go their separate ways, with Xander returning to Cleveland.

Stoically nodding across the distance at Buffy, Xander went to the trunk of their car, lifting this open and pulling out from there her suitcase the woman had packed for their trip. Placing this single piece of luggage onto the gravel road, Xander straightened up, and with a set face which yet had a gleam of moisture showing in his remaining eye, the man dejectedly waved in return to Buffy. Turning with a stiff back, Xander got into the car and slowly drove off. Buffy miserably watched him leave, until the car was finally out of sight among the twists and turns of the road into the low hills surrounding the cove holding the beach cottage.

As she slowly walked down the road towards her suitcase, Buffy managed to control her sniffles until she picked up her luggage, before uttering a choked sob. Absently wiping away her tears, the woman trudged back to the house, carrying her burden. It wasn't until she'd stepped back onto the porch that a gloomy Buffy realized she had no idea what to do next. Where exactly in the cottage was she going to spend the night? The Slayer hadn't been paying all that much attention before to the living arrangements of her new home, which made Buffy pause in the process of opening the front door. Standing in the doorway while carefully looking down the main hallway, Buffy now noticed a second room with its own door ajar, next to Brandon's bedroom.

Moving as quietly as a Slayer could, Buffy went down the hallway and turned left, finding herself in another bedroom possessing a queen-size mattress resting on its wood frame in the middle of the room. This large sleeping pad was quite devoid of any bedspread or covers. Placing her suitcase against the wall, Buffy paused to listen. With her keen ears, she had no trouble hearing through the partition separating herself from the next room, easily discerning Brandon's soft breathing but no other sounds or movement by him in there. Judging by the man's even respiration, he was probably taking a nap in his own bed.

Feeling grateful for the chance to move in without any possible interruptions, Buffy investigated the room's closet. Her spirits lifted at finding in there some pillows, and more importantly, the necessary sheets and bedspread lying upon a closet shelf. First thoroughly shaking out these cloths to give them a good airing, Buffy quickly made the bed and added the pillows at the front of the headboard. Once that had been done, Buffy picked up her suitcase, placing this luggage atop the bed, and then she opened it to start unpacking.

Years of traveling around the world on Council business had finally trained a disinclined Buffy to pack lightly whenever possible. Now, unless there was some kind of advance warning that she'd need formal clothes or more outfits for any possible situations, a single (if rather large) suitcase was more than enough for what the woman had earlier thought would have been only a weekend getaway, with no reason for anything other but casual wear.

Working efficiently, Buffy laid out upon the bed her clothes, makeup kit, and emergency Slayer gear consisting of a couple of stakes, a plastic bottle of Evian holy water (one of an entire pallet blessed a month earlier by a very understanding priest on call for the Cleveland Slayers), and a slim booklet having a dozen pages, each individually showing the image of a hostile demon most likely to be encountered by Council personnel. The latter was a Willow special, imbued with this witch's personal magic. Should worse come to worse, any good guy (or girl) in possession of their booklet could fold over the exact page representing the same monster which was presently snapping at their sprinting heels, and then tear out the page. That action promptly set off Willow's specific spell targeted directly at the pursuing demon. In turn, this casting would usually put this foul fiend down for a short while, giving the panting Council staff member enough time to completely escape or finish off the job, whichever they thought was best.

The really nice thing about those items, Buffy reflected, was that all of her Slaying stuff there could be easily carried past any customs agent in the entire world, without the ordinarily suspicious bureaucrats even batting an eye. If any of these people bothered to ask about the booklet, a quick story about a gift for someone who liked to play Dungeons and Dragons would usually allay any curiosity. Particularly since the back of the pages were printed chock-full with such boring stuff as hit points, strength levels, and other junk that Andrew Wells had come up with before this young man's unfortunate passing in a surprisingly heroic fashion. He'd done a really good job, even though back then Buffy had discreetly turned off her brain in order to preserve her sanity when that supreme geek explained in tedious detail about his team-up with Willow to product this protective collection of pages.

As for the other things, the bottle of water wouldn't even be noticed, unlike the stakes. Still, due to those specific weapons used against vampires were ornately carved and much shorter and slimmer than the usual pointed wooden sticks, it was easy enough to pass these objects as spare decorative hairpins. If anyone ever asked, Buffy could obligingly demonstrate how the ones currently thrust through her existing hairstyle were keeping this blonde bun in place at the back of her head.

Speaking of this… Buffy absently reached up and pulled out two thin pieces of carved wood from her coiffure, shaking her head to allow the long hair there to freely fall down her back. Glancing at what she was holding, a gift during last Christmas from Xander of lignum vitae stakes personally hand-made by him just for herself, Buffy heaved an unhappy sigh. She then reached out to the head of the bed, carefully tucking the stakes under the pillow there that she'd be using tonight.

With this done, Buffy went over to the battered chest of a single drawer against the far wall, about to put the rest of her clothing inside that small piece of furniture. Unfortunately, the damp sea air had warped the inner wooden storage compartment, so the young woman spent the next several minutes trying to pull open the drawer without destroying the entire chest due to over-applying her Slayer strength against her newest evil opponent. Also, Buffy couldn't even relieve her feelings by loudly expressing a few expletives, not when either course of action meant the possibility of awakening Brandon still peacefully sleeping in the next room.

Eventually, Buffy managed to judiciously pry open the stubborn drawer far enough to produce a narrow gap, sufficient to allow her clothes to be placed inside this, albeit with some necessary cramming of her garments that was definitely going to cause severe wrinkling to the stylish outfits. Shooting toward the chest of drawers her best irritated glower, something else also caught Buffy's notice at the bottom of the small compartment which she'd been struggling with for the last minute or so. During all this irksome exertion, consisting of cautious yanking and tugging, the Slayer had listened to with her acute hearing the sounds of several objects rattling around inside the shifting chest. Now that the drawer was finally open, Buffy could at least see what was in there.

It really wasn't all that much, just the normal household detritus which always manages to spontaneously materialize inside a family's furnishings: a couple of pens rolling around and undoubtedly empty of any ink, several pennies, a few desiccated rubber bands, and a small square of blank white paper, only a little bit bigger than the palm of Buffy's hand.

Mildly intrigued by the latter item, Buffy used a fingernail to peel off the paper from where it was sticking to the bottom of the drawer. Turning that freed object over in her hand to check out the other side of this, the Slayer blinked at seeing what she now held. It was an old Polaroid photo, well before the days of digital cameras, and the surface of this little picture was stained and blotched from years of damp inside the drawer. Yet even with the faded colors and other water damage, the image shown in the photo was still discernable. On it, three people were standing and facing the camera, during some sunny day in the past. There were two adults, a man and a woman, and in between this couple, there was a little boy, about Harry's age, all of them smiling as they stood in front of-

Buffy's eyebrows rose towards her hairline in astonishment. She immediately recognized what was behind those strangers in the picture. The front of the small beach cottage where she was presently unpacking didn't look all that different from what was then shown in that photo of uncertain age. Now really curious, Buffy peered more closely at the trio having their picture taken so long ago. The young woman's breath abruptly caught in her throat. That little boy's features were quite familiar, even though Brandon Martin now barely resembled the happy child he'd once been.

A few moments later, Buffy found herself seated upon the bed among her clothes, still staring at the photo in her hand, and not remembering exactly how she'd gotten there. Absently wiping away the single tear running down her right cheek, Buffy again examined the Polaroid. This time she concentrated upon the pair of adults there, until she eventually admitted her sorrowful defeat. During their brief marriage, Brandon had shown several pictures of his deceased parents to Buffy, but right now, she couldn't honestly say if those two adults in the photo were indeed them. Sniffling sadly, Buffy carefully placed into her blouse's front pocket this unexpected memento which might explain exactly why Brandon had come to this little house to die.

Suddenly feeling the need for some air, Buffy got off the bed and she moved to the bedroom door, leaving behind her clothing on the bed to be put away later. As she stepped out into the hall corridor, the young woman paused to listen to the soft breathing of her husband in the other room, only to then continue towards the front of the house. Glancing to the left while she neared the main door, Buffy felt a certain part of her body then call for attention. Obeying her growling stomach's demands, she impulsively turned into the combined kitchen/breakfast nook.

Uncertainly standing there and looking around the tidy room, whose neatness seemed to be from lack of use rather than constant cleaning up, Buffy then tried opening a few cupboards in search of something to eat. Unfortunately, she found nothing inside the kitchen shelves but cutlery, glasses, and tableware. Even the main cupboard by the refrigerator was completely bare, with the normally present cans and packages of assorted groceries for the house's residents being absent. Finally, Buffy tried what she should've done right off, opening the refrigerator door. The Slayer stared in astonishment at what was resting upon the interior shelves of that propane-powered appliance.

Taking up every single inch of the inside of the refrigerator were numerous cans and bottles of nutritional supplement drinks in various flavors. There weren't any other kind of provisions at all. Bewilderedly closing the refrigerator door, Buffy then scratched her head in total confusion. Sudden understanding then came to the Slayer. She wretchedly remembered her mother's own ultimately unsuccessful medical treatment for the brain tumor which eventually claimed Joyce Summers' life. Back then, the various pills and other parts of the older woman's chemotherapy had often made Joyce nauseous and unable to even bear the thought of eating solid food. As suggested by her doctor, Buffy's mother had for a few weeks lived on fruit and vegetable juice smoothies with protein powders mixed in with these liquid foods, accompanied by other dietary supplements.

Obviously, a man suffering from an equivalent malady would also prefer to drink his meals rather than spend his last remaining time preparing and cooking food that he probably couldn't even keep down, anyway. When Buffy came to that sorrowful conclusion, she now _really_ needed to get out of the house. Hurriedly departing from the kitchen and then through the front door out to the porch, Buffy kept on going over the rocky beach between the cottage and the ocean, walking rapidly along the sand and leaving her footprints behind in the damp ground.

She quickly found herself approaching the steep hill on the south side of the cottage. Buffy soon spotted a small dirt trail running up the slope of the hill. Without even thinking about it, the California girl rushed up the trail, concentrating on physical effort instead of the immense weight of grief currently smothering her soul. Buffy's superhuman muscles got her to the top of the hill far faster than any normal climber could have done so. Ignoring the small clearing at the peak which provided a lookout point onto the Atlantic Ocean, the Slayer then dashed into the forest greenery further inland, with the sounds of brokenhearted sobbing slowly receding after the young woman who'd vanished among the trees.


	9. Chapter 9

An hour later, Buffy was lying on her back in the soft grass growing on top of the shoreline hill she was currently occupying, head propped up on the small rock she'd found, and blankly staring outwards at the ocean crashing against the rocks before the road a hundred feet below. She'd now recovered from her headlong dash earlier, of running for miles through the remote, uninhabited woodland of the Maine forest in a rare opportunity to let out her Slayer spirit in full daylight. For once, there wasn't any risk of ordinary people around to see and marvel at the small woman sprinting faster than humanly possible, hurdling massive boulders without the slightest strain, and effortlessly leaping over thirty-foot-wide creeks.

Her flight hadn't been completely heedless, no matter how this might have seemed to Buffy. A rarely-used part of the woman's mind had instinctively guided her loping body into following an immense half-circle which in the end had led the blonde back to the ocean hills on the other side of where she'd started, with the beach cottage further down in its small cove a few hundred yards on her right. Buffy glanced over to gaze at the place where she'd decided to stay, and her stomach then loudly produced an impolite growl. Apparently whatever emotional upsets in her life were presently happening, a Slayer still had to eat.

Buffy absently shoved her hand into her front pants pocket, and she pulled out her cellphone, eyeing this with some doubt. It would be the simplest thing ever to just call up Willow Rosenberg and ask for a small favor from her friend. The witch probably wouldn't mind at all doing a little mojo from the Slayer school in Cleveland, finishing with magically sending some Chinese take-out from Buffy's favorite restaurant to where the Slayer was resting on the Maine hill. However, there were a few little flaws in that plan.

For one thing, using the Red Witch's matchless might for something so trivial as fast-food delivery was rather like hacking into the National Security Agency's most powerful supercomputer controlling this intelligence agency's ultimate secrets which safeguarded America, just so that you could then play Spider Solitaire on it. Besides, Willow had long ago made it very clear to the rest of the rebuilt Council, that contrary to the Disney movie 'Aladdin', she wasn't some kind of supernatural object who only needed to be rubbed and asked for three wishes in order to produce the necessary spells or enchantments necessary to save the day. Any magic of hers, ranging from minor to major castings, came at an actual cost to the Wiccan, and it was solely her decision on how she'd use her powers to assist any Council member.

And yes, that _definitely_ included the time a while back when a drunken Faith visiting Cleveland and obviously having a helluva good time somewhere else in the city had called up Willow at two in the morning. The brunette Slayer boozily ordered from the barely-awake witch the following: three dozen meat-lover's pizzas, extra cheese, and "-make 'em all pipin' hot, 'cause the fun's just startin' here!"

Afterwards, Willow absolutely refused to confess exactly what she'd then done with her magic before going back to sleep. Not even to a curious Xander, when the one-eyed Sunnydale survivor confronted her over that subject in the Joyce Summers Foundation cafeteria the next day. Staring after the witch giggling to herself while she strolled away from the confused man, Xander had glanced around the busy room filled with Slayers, Watchers, and other staff members at their meals. He'd then spotted Faith seated alone at one of the tables and picking at her lunch salad. Walking over to join this sour-faced woman, Xander noticed that the Slayer was leaning forward on her chair, perched at the edge of the seat as if it was too uncomfortable for Faith to otherwise sit down.

The instant Xander stopped at her side, Faith glared at him. Just as the man was opening his mouth to ask just what the hell had happened last night, he was interrupted by a very irked feminine growl, "Shut it, boytoy. It's bad enough that I learned to never do that again, what with yer kiddiegarten pal havin' one wicked sense of humor, even after bein' yanked outta dreamtime. Party ended right then an' there when Red sent over just what I asked for, includin' the meat-lover part!"

Pausing in her grumpy tirade to wincingly rub her aching rear with its several bandaged punctures under her jeans which were proving to be remarkably resistant to Slayer healing, Faith then glumly confided to a gaping Xander, "First time I ever seen pizza with fangs."

In her spot atop the Maine hill while staring out to sea, Buffy's lips idly twitched at remembering the whole hilarious story told to her much later by Xander. However, the blonde was seriously considering calling up Willow anyway, since this hungry woman was confident that the witch wouldn't do anything like that to Buffy. During everything since Sunnydale, even with the occasional rocky patches in their relationship, there was still a firm, deep friendship between the two women.

Which lead directly to Buffy's sudden changing her mind over contacting the Wiccan now despite being on good terms with her. Willow would normally be quite willing to magically send over an appetizing meal for Buffy as a favor between comrades, but this redhead would also reasonably want to know why she was doing this in the first place. "Isn't there somewhere to eat nearby? Come to think of it, where are you and Xan, anyway? Why isn't he asking for his own munchies? Let me talk to him, Buffy…"

All delivered at full Willow-babble, naturally. Buffy really didn't want to get into the whole discussion right now with the Sunnydale native about herself and Brandon and his fatal illness. Plus, how she was staying without Xander at the cott-

The approaching sound of a car engine was then heard by Buffy, providing a welcome distraction from her depressed mood. Turning her head to stare down the road to the cottage which twistingly led back into the hills surrounding this small house, Buffy's first startled thought was that for some reason of his own, Xander had turned back and was returning in their rental car. Standing up to peer at the winding road below her hilltop location, Buffy waited until a car appeared from around the far bend.

Her sudden hopes of an unexpected reunion with her fiancé (who'd still better have a _good_ reason for this) were promptly dashed at seeing this was an entirely different and unfamiliar vehicle from what Xander had been driving today. Now passing over the gravel road a hundred feet below herself was a battered, blue pickup truck that a puzzled Buffy continued to watch until this car came to stop in front of the beach cottage. The sightlines from her position kept the Slayer from seeing exactly who the driver was, until this person opened their car door and gingerly got out of their beat-up automobile, to next walk towards the house.

Despite being several hundred yards away and further up, the Slayer's superhuman vision allowed Buffy to recognize this man right away, as the deadpan old guy by his farm mailbox who'd solemnly pulled her leg during their brief encounter just a short while ago. However, at this point, that oldster was clearly in a much happier mood, smiling at Brandon shuffling out through the front door onto the cottage porch. This skeletal man had his own pleased expression on his wasted features, holding out his arms in a welcoming hug…

While a boggled Buffy continued to watch the two men embrace each other on the porch, her emotions were in a complete jumble at this new mystery. *Who the hell is that guy, and why's he hugging Brandon? Is he some kind of family? A relative your husband never told you about?* Shaking her head in absolute bafflement, the young woman on the hilltop then wondered what exactly to do next, as she observed the pair below disappear from sight into the beach cottage.

Buffy eyed the steep slope of the hill before herself, estimated she could tackle it without the slightest problem. A few downward bounds, and she'd be at the bottom, not a hair out of place, and then a quick jog on the gravel road to the house- And then what? Burst into the cottage and interrupt the old guy's visit with Brandon? Why? It all looked perfectly innocent, but Buffy shuddered at the very thought of being caught acting even more rudely than she'd unfortunately managed before, invading Brandon's privacy.

Sitting back down on the ground, a glum Buffy sighed out loud, until a spur-of-the-moment idea suddenly appeared in her mind. She'd wait for the old guy to leave, however long it took. Then, there'd be a quick sprint over the hilltops, getting ahead of this man's car in time to run or jump down the slopes to the road, all without being seen. After that, it'd be only natural for Buffy to wave down the oncoming vehicle during her returning stroll in the middle of the road, and have a casual chat with the stopped driver, what with her staying here and wanting to meet with the neighbors. A nice friendly talk between the two of them, while slipping in a few prying questions during this, would do a good job of figuring out the whole situation. Best of all, this would avoid upsetting Brandon any further.

Satisfied with her hasty plan, Buffy leaned back to lie down on the ground, beginning to doze off in an alpha predator's light sleep which would immediately end when she heard through her slumber the sound of the departing pickup truck. The Slayer also firmly told her grumbling stomach, which was demanding some kind of nourishment at once, to shut the hell up.

* * *

"Oh, Brandon," muttered Ed to himself in a very morose voice while he absently took the familiar road on his way home. "Son, I just wish you'd told me- _Jesus Kayrist!_"

The elderly man's right foot hastily stomped on the brake pedal, causing pieces of gravel from the road to fly far and wide as the pickup truck slid to a stop in front of a wide-eyed woman making her own quick sideways leap to safety. His heart hammering like fury, the farmer still clutching the steering wheel frantically peered through the windshield to see if he'd managed to avoid colliding with the young lady that had been standing right in the middle of the road just a second ago.

Buffy wasn't feeling all too composed herself. She'd cut it a bit fine, even with her Slayer speed, waiting too close past the road curve and not sufficiently considering the approaching car might have a driver both preoccupied with what he'd just learned, and also having his reflexes slowed by age. Coughing at the dust cloud blowing into her face which had been kicked up by the car's sudden stop, Buffy then leaned forward to rub at her shins. These had been painfully struck by several pebbles thrown up by the car's skidding wheels. A moment later, she lifted her head at hearing a man's worried voice that ended in a very familiar and irritating tone of sheer incredulity.

"Are you…Buffy?"


	10. Chapter 10

Oddly enough, the lifelong inner surge of mild exasperation over how most people reacted to her first name actually steadied Buffy Summers. There was also the fact that being called this meant the guy still sitting in his truck and watching through the car's lowered left side window her cautious approach towards him had been told about herself by Brandon. Now, the question was, how much had been revealed-

Wonderingly regarding Buffy as she stopped at the side of the car next to his driver's seat, the elderly man them bemusedly muttered to himself, "So, you're his wife."

Despite what she'd expected, Buffy flinched a bit at those specific words. Unwillingly, she met the oldster's gaze, a little afraid of what she might see there. Yet…instead of disapproval or any other kind of hostile judgment, a woman who'd made an unwise marriage and now deeply regretted how she'd treated her then-spouse now saw upon her observer's features nothing but simple curiosity intermixed with signs of actual respect.

Right after that, the old man blinked. His lined face then changed into a somewhat chagrined look, as he evidently remembered his manners. Holding out his right hand through the open car window, a quick introduction was made by him: "Hello, I'm Edwin Adamson. Just call me Ed."

Reaching out, Buffy gently shook the offered hand, which was callused and wrinkled after decades of hard manual labor. In turn, she told the man pulling back his hand, "Okay, er, Ed."

There was a short pause. Both people on the road now cautiously eyed each other, with the pair of them wondering about exactly what to say next. Buffy was the first to blurt out the foremost thing on her mind, "Are you Brandon's grandfather or uncle or something?"

"_What?_" quickly came from the startled man, who stared at the nervous young lady standing by his pickup. His brow wrinkling with puzzlement, Ed then stated, "Nope, I've just known the boy all his life-"

Silence now descended again among the twosome, as the elder of the duo abruptly closed his mouth without finishing his unthinking sentence which had harshly reminded them both about someone else's impending death. Buffy apprehensively shifted on her feet, with this movement causing the Slayer to suddenly become aware of the contents of her blouse pocket rubbing against her chest. Seizing the chance to dispel the existing awkward moment, the young woman quickly reached into her shirtfront, and she pulled out a small photograph. This was immediately offered to the distressed man in his car, along with the words, "Um, can you tell me anything about this photo, Ed?"

A bewildered farmer now took the presented small square of paper having on it a picture of two adults and a little boy. Mentally wishing he'd brought along his bifocals, Ed tilted his head back and held the photo out at arm's length, almost pressed up against the car windshield. Squinting to focus his vision, the aged man's jaw dropped, just before he exclaimed in astonished recognition, "I'll be damned! _I_ took that photo years ago! I remember Brandon snatching this out of my hand, just so he could shake it to make the picture appear faster!"

Unexpected tears appeared at the corners of Buffy's eyes. She had her own quick flash of memory of herself as a little girl who'd done exactly the same thing with a Polaroid picture at a Christmastime decades ago. Clearing her tight throat, the woman risked, "So, that's really Brandon there with his parents?"

Bringing his arm down to put the photo on the passenger seat, to next rub the back of his neck in a effort to chase away the sudden crick there, Ed then absently replied, "Yep. Jim and Beth Martin, their third or fourth year here, I think."

Now it was Buffy's turn to be astonished. "Brandon and his mom and dad were staying at the cottage back then? You can really remember that, so long ago?"

A considering gaze was sent Buffy's way, with a slowly dawning look of comprehension beginning to appear on Ed's lined features. Nodding to himself, the man muttered, "No, he probably wouldn't have told you-"

"Huh?" a bewildered Buffy interrupted the farmer.

Sighing, Ed sadly stared out through his pickup's windshield, until after a few more moments, he shook off his sudden melancholy, turning his head to pensively examine the young woman still standing on the road and waiting for an answer. Patting the passenger seat by himself, Ed gruffly suggested, "Ah, Buffy, would you like to sit inside? It's a pretty long story, and you might as well get comfortable off your feet."

More than a bit taken aback, Buffy did want to know more about the picture and everything else, so she answered, "Sure, Mr. Ad- Ed." The Slayer then walked around the front of the pickup, stopping at the right side car door. As she pulled this open and got inside, Buffy slid into her seat, glancing over at where the man next to herself was patiently holding out something in his fingers. Her breath momentarily catching in her throat, Buffy now gently took from him the small family portrait and with equal care, she replaced this into her blouse front pocket. Buffy then looked expectantly at Ed.

The elderly farmer reminiscently glanced around the worn interior of their vehicle, and he began his story by saying, "Believe it or not, this same heap of junk was only a few months old back in 1981 when I drove it into town to meet the people who'd answered my rental ad for the beach cottage my family's owned for decades. James and Elizabeth Martin were two schoolteachers on their honeymoon, who couldn't afford a trip to anyplace else, so they went on a driving tour of the Maine coast. A while into this, they looked at the local paper for a cheap place to stay on their own for a few days. Since they were the only ones to call me about the cottage, I was willing to negotiate the price, and they moved in there for a couple of weeks."

The corners of Ed's mouth lifted in a nostalgic smile that deepened the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "From what the pair of 'em told me when they left, they had a really good time, which made me happy. Nice folks, and I wished 'em the best, but I didn't think any more about it, until next February, when I got a call from Jim. He told me that they were thinking about spending the whole summer at my place, and would I rent the cottage to them for that long? Well, I right away said sure, and next June, after school let out for 'em both, they showed up again at my farm. Along with a little surprise for me and my wife, which was a three-month old baby."

As he glanced over at a fascinated Buffy, a faint twinkle appeared in Ed's eyes, while he continued in a perfect deadpan, "Like anybody else, I could do the math easy, but I didn't say nothing, at least until a few years later. Me and my wife Mary, we now knew 'em well enough for Beth to gleefully admit to us over dinner one night at my house, that her little boy was almost certainly conceived at the cottage back there."

An entirely unexpected giggle escaped from Buffy then. Ed placidly ignored this feminine snort of mirth, before he continued his story. "During all that time, Jim, Beth and Brandon came here every single year, staying the whole summer. They could've taken their vacations elsewhere else, but nobody wanted to. Everyone loved it here, especially Brandon. He grew up knowing every rock and tree around, until he started spending most of his time at the farm. That was really…nice, having a boy there, following me around at work. Mary and me, we never had but our two daughters, Hannah and Helen, and they both grew up thinking Brandon was their little brother. Played together, got into mischief together, took their spankings for that together."

Ed stopped speaking then, with his face slowly becoming bleak. A worried Buffy, watching the farmer again stare out the windshield, suddenly realized that his cheerful narrative was now about to turn into something grimmer. Ed soon started again, in an increasingly sorrowful tone. "All told, the Martins came here for fifteen years straight on, until when they were driving home in 1997 from here, Jim and Beth were killed in a car crash. Brandon was luckier then, if you could say that, with only some broken bones. We got contacted by their hometown friends who knew about us. Me and Mary rushed there for the funeral. Afterwards, we told Brandon he could stay with us forever, but he turned us down, crying all the while. He said he loved us all, but he just couldn't bear to live at my farm, not when he'd remember there his mom and dad every single second."

Ed interrupted his story at that point, when he voice thickened into heartbroken silence. The farmer reached across Buffy to fumble open the glove compartment, pulling out some tissues from a box of Kleenex inside, and using these to wipe his damp eyes. Unnoticed, Buffy did the same.

After an interval of shared grief between the pair in the pickup, Ed resumed speaking. "Brandon went off to live in Ohio with some family friends who took him in. After a few days, not wanting to intrude too soon, we called him, asking how he was. He still seemed sad but okay, and every now and then, one of us would call him again, with the same results. But, Brandon never called us, and we didn't hear from him at all after our Christmas card and presents we sent him. I got worried enough to talk to the people he was staying with, and then I heard the bad news. Brandon had gotten better at dealing with what happened, but every time we'd called and reminded him about the accident, he got really depressed and had nightmares. He started dreading our calls, but he didn't know what to do about it without hurting our feelings."

The farmer swallowed past a lump in his throat, as he went on. "After discussing it among us, there was only one thing to do. Me, Mary, Helen, and Hannah, we each wrote a good, long letter to Brandon about his time with us, how much we loved him, that kind of thing. Then, we put all the letters together in a package and mailed this to him. Before it arrived, I got on the phone and talked with Brandon, telling the boy I knew how painful it was that we were reminding him of the accident, and we loved him too much to hurt him like that any more. So, the letters coming from us would be the last time we'd contact him. Brandon didn't have to read the mail right away, just keep it safe until he felt able to go through this. No matter how long that took, we'd still feel the same way we told him in the letters, and hopefully, sometime in the future, he'd be ready to get in touch with us again."

Ed brought up his hand to wearily rub his face, and after dropping this back into his lap, he stared out through the car windshield before speaking again. "Well, time passed - years of it without ever hearing from the boy - and our family got busy with other things. Until one day, Brandon showed up completely out of the blue a couple of weeks ago, looking like he does now. He admitted this was because he'd been really sick, and he wasn't ever going to get better. The only thing he asked me for was to spend his final days at the place where him and his mom and dad were so happy together."

Compassionately glancing over at where Buffy was softly crying into her wad of Kleenex, Ed then said in a gentle voice, "Well, naturally I couldn't do anything else but that, and me and Hannah - she and her husband run the farm now - we made him comfortable there the best we could. I visit Brandon as often as he feels up to it, but it wasn't until today that he got around to telling me about you and him being married and then separating."

The Slayer promptly flinched, as if she'd received an actual blow at hearing the elderly man's concluding words. Bursting into sobs, she turned to the startled farmer and wailed directly into his concerned face, "It's all my fault! I thought only about me, and when things didn't work out, I just left without considering Brandon's feelings! Plus, today I showed up without any warning at all about something stupid, blundering in like a total idiot-"

"YOU HUSH UP _NOW,_ YOUNG LADY!" roared Ed with deafening force inside the pickup truck.

Buffy was frozen in her seat, the Slayer's ears actually ringing from the unexpected interrupting bellow from the elderly man. She gaped at someone giving her an extremely stern look which was coming from a father who'd successfully raised two daughters in his lifetime, with all the accompanying histrionics and drama from these young females during this achievement. In his determined, no-nonsense tone, Ed now barked, "Buffy, none of that damn foolishness! What's done is done, and what problems you and Brandon have with each other, they don't mean all that much now! There's no point in blaming yourself for anything in the past, because what difference does it make to somebody else who soon won't care at all, no matter how important it seemed earlier?"

"But-" Buffy gulped, just before being overridden again.

"But me no buts, young lady," decisively snorted Ed, who then bestowed a full-blown, formidable Maine glower at the subdued girl sharing the vehicle with him. Gruffly continuing, the farmer now revealed something very surprising. "I been through this before with Brandon, and even with the boy about to expire and all, I'm not gonna allow him or even you to pointlessly wallow in guilt over things that can't be helped!"

A bewildered Buffy had to ask, "What are you talking about?"

Leaning back in his car seat, Ed had his face turn somber, before replying, "My wife Mary, she passed away three years back. Ovarian cancer. Well, when Brandon learned about this when he came here, the boy took it much too hard, saying he should've called us sooner, rather than going on with his life. I set him straight, telling the numbskull he had good reasons for that, just like we had good reasons for respecting his privacy and not sending him word of Mary's condition. Anyway, I asked him a real important question then: if things had gone different and he'd been told, would Brandon have come here right away to be with her? Of course, he said yes, without even thinking about it. Just like you did."

"_Me?_" gasped Buffy, caught up in the moment.

"Yup," nodded Ed, cocking an eyebrow at the girl's evident mystification, as he went on, "You might've been a bit more tactful about visiting Brandon today, but once you learned the truth, you did the only proper thing. You stayed."

Hanging her head, Buffy stared at the floor of the car, all while mumbling, "I couldn't do anything else-"

"Lots of folks might feel otherwise, leaving as fast as they could and letting it finish without them around," shrugged Ed. He sympathetically studied a reddening Buffy still avoiding his eyes. Offering some more of his advice, the farmer then seriously spoke, "Now about Brandon and you-"

It was at that exact point when a Slayer's biological functions now overrode any attempts whatsoever to maintain her dignity. Or, to put it this way, Buffy's starving stomach now growled loudly enough to make the pickup's windshield actually vibrate.

Jerking her head up to fixedly stare out at the gravel road beyond the car, a young woman's entire features abruptly changed into a mortified shade of pure scarlet. Particularly when the man next to herself disbelievingly exclaimed, "Good God, girl, didn't you eat _anything_ today?"

"Not since breakfast," sheepishly muttered Buffy, refusing to glance at Ed chuckling to himself. This farmer then started the car and drove forward. That unexpected action finally caused the Slayer to look over in surprise at where her companion was seated, hands firmly gripping the steering wheel. The elderly man himself turned his head to regard Buffy with great good humor, as indicated in his next amiable words.

"No arguments about this, young lady. You're coming to my house, where you'll be fed a decent meal. Afterwards, we'll load you up with groceries and take you back to the cottage. I've seen the stuff Brandon has to drink, and that'll do for him, but you need more than this. If you run out of anything, call us- Do you have a phone?"

Feeling a little numb over the sudden turn of events, Buffy could do nothing but dazedly nod and pat the bulge in her pants pocket at where her cellphone rested. Satisfied, her driver continued while their truck went down the road, "All right, then. I'll give you our number and we'll take care of everything else as well."

Despite herself, Buffy had to mention, if only out of sheer politeness, "Look, you don't need to do all-"

In a truly unyielding voice, Ed interrupted his newfound guest with, "That ain't what I want to hear from Brandon's wife. What you should be saying right now is, 'Thank you, Mr. Adamson.' Go on, do it, Buffy."

After an incredulous pause, Buffy Summers at last understood she had absolutely no other choice but to comply. She then obediently recited, "Thank you, Mr. Adamson."

"You're welcome," grunted Ed, as he rounded the last curve which showed the Maine farmhouse in the distance. A few moments later, when they were nearly there, the elderly man spoke under his breath, as if to himself, "When you're eating, I'm calling in the hospice doctor who's working with Brandon, because you really need to talk with her. This doctor also helped Mary; she was very nice, and good at it. We even got used to her name."

Not sure if she was being directly addressed by Ed, Buffy restricted herself to a cautious nod. What was a hospice, some kind of hospital? And what was so odd about the doctor's name, anyway?


	11. Chapter 11

"Hello, I'm Doctor Coffin."

Letting go of the suddenly limp hand of a young woman staring slack-jawed at herself, this introduced doctor then sent a distinctly annoyed glower at the elderly man snickering under his breath while standing across from the other two people meeting for the first time in his farm driveway.

A very irked voice accompanied this exasperated glance, as Karen Pierce Coffin snapped to her mischievous friend, "You know quite well it's a fine New England family name! Plus, I got married to Jack right after high school, even before I decided to start pre-med in college!"

After this, a rather sardonic expression now flashed over the mature woman's features. She added with more than a hint of malice in her tone, "Besides, why don't we discuss how you feel about your own name…_Edwin?_"

At the very sound of his disliked full first name, the farmer instantly stopped disrespectfully laughing, to instead develop a definite air of grouchiness. His silver-haired visitor, who appeared to be in her early sixties and was dressed in a professional outfit of a matching blue jacket and pants with sensible shoes, smirked in silent victory. Turning back to the bemused girl observing the byplay between the older people, Dr. Coffin changed her mocking smile into one of actual caring humor which laid naturally upon her kind face.

Sympathetically eyeing the blonde girl, the doctor suggested, "Shall we go inside, Buffy?"

This was followed by a wave towards the Maine farmhouse at the far end of the driveway from where the trio were at present standing by the older woman's car she'd parked there a few moments ago. Waiting for Karen was someone she knew very well and also a complete stranger, whose presence had been succinctly explained during Ed's quick phone call to the doctor during the younger woman's lunch. From what she'd been told, Karen was more than willing enough to clear her plans for the day and pay a visit to the Adamson farm.

Buffy glanced over at Ed, who affably shrugged in his acceptance. The man then offered, "Make yourself at home, ladies. Go ahead, use the front room where you can talk. I'll be working outside for a while, and Hannah and Mike won't be back until tonight. You know where everything is for coffee, Karen."

Giving the women an amiable farewell nod, Ed then stumped off into the direction of the barn, circling around the doctor's car on the way.

Soon enough, Buffy found herself seated on a comfortable sofa, sipping at a cup of very good coffee. Over the rim of her cup, she regarded with some perplexity the older woman seated on the other end of the sofa. The California native was soon encouraged by the evident twinkle in her companion's eyes, as if waiting for what this other female was clearly expecting. Buffy held her half-empty cup in her lap, and risked, "Um, doctor, doesn't your last name make things kind of tricky when you…" Not sure just how to complete that question, Buffy let her voice trail off.

Doctor Coffin dryly finished what the girl had been trying to say, "When I discuss dying and death with terminal patients and their families, you mean?"

She depreciatively chuckled, before continuing, "In some cases, it definitely does. However, more often you couldn't ask for a better ice-breaker. Even with serious double-takes, it tends to decrease the initial awkwardness about the whole point of our meetings. Which is exactly what I'm hoping for."

Karen's voice softened as she steadily gazed at her listener. "Buffy, I've been at this for a while, and I'll use whatever helps in counseling my clients."

Mindful of a certain time in her life, Buffy then spoke without thinking, "Yeah, if it winds up making people feel better, that's great. I worked as a high-school student counselor for a while-" Abruptly stopping short, Buffy's face turned pale, and her coffee cup started to tremble in her hands.

Seeing this, Karen knew she had to pursue further what she'd just heard, but in the most tactful way possible. In a very gentle tone, the older woman coaxed, "Did something go wrong, Buffy?"

Swallowing hard, the memories of Cassie Newton played out in Buffy's mind. She eventually ended her blank stare off into the distance of the living room, to then look into Karen's concerned expression. In a truly desolate tone, the Slayer admitted, "A girl at my school, just a couple years younger than me, she came into my office, and told me she was going to die. And she did, a few days later."

"Was she experiencing medical or psychological problems, Buffy?" somberly asked the saddened doctor. Karen kept her sudden distress firmly under control, as this woman now began using all her acquired skill and knowledge to treat her latest patient.

A bitter snort unexpectedly came from the blonde girl seated across on the sofa. A grim Buffy shook her head, before telling the intent doctor gauging every reaction of her companion, "No more than anyone else in my home then."

"Er, what?" blinked a thrown-off Doctor Coffin, who hadn't at all been expected that specific answer.

Sighing, Buffy groped for the right words to explain without giving away too many secrets of the Scooby Gang. "I spent seven years in a really bad part of town, from sophomore year on. At my high school, and also the whole city, the place was overrun by gangbangers who weren't shy about killing off each other and any innocent bystanders."

Bleak eyes met those of the alarmed older woman. Buffy finished, "I saw lots of people die in front of me - strangers, friends, family."

A startled comment was blurted out by Karen, "I didn't know Los Angeles was that dangerous!"

"Huh?"

Buffy squinted in confusion at the apprehensive older woman, until the Slayer remembered what she'd told Ed while they'd been making her lunch. Quickly understanding the mistake, the girl from California corrected the doctor, "No, I'm from there originally, but that place was a couple hundred miles north of L.A., a small city called Sunnydale."

A look of sudden recognition flashed over Karen's face. "Sunnydale, didn't it-"

Having done this all too many times before, Buffy wearily interrupted, "-fall into a really big sinkhole a couple of years ago, yeah."

Thoughtfully nodding to herself, Karen regarded with some pity the small woman leaning back against the sofa and taking a calming gulp of coffee. Once the cup had been lowered once more, the hospice worker carefully asked, "Was this when a member of your family perished?"

"Mmm? No, that was years earlier." After this vague answer, Buffy relapsed into silence. This stretched on until the Slayer looked over at where Karen was clearly waiting with serene expectation of a more thorough explanation.

Eventually, Buffy spoke again, if only to reluctantly restart their conversation, "It was my mom, Joyce Summers. She had a brain tumor and had it treated. After that, she seemed to get better. But, she took a nap in our house one day, and she never woke up. I…I…found her there, lying on the downstairs couch."

At the end of this forlorn statement, Buffy's voice had sunk into a heartbroken whisper, along with tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. Again staring blankly ahead, the Slayer barely noticed how her companion had moved across the sofa to now be right next by herself, with Buffy's cup smoothly removed from her slack fingers and put away on the small table before them both. Nor did the younger woman react to the right arm which was then placed around her shoulders, to gently draw Buffy nearer to the other. As she leaned her head onto the offered shoulder, a soft voice murmured into Buffy's ear, "Let it go, honey, let it all go."

Her face contorting into a mask of pure anguish, Buffy absently touched at her stomach, with her fingers trailing over this part of her body. She sobbed, "I felt my baby die inside me!"

Beginning to shudder, Buffy Summers was held in strong arms ending in gentle fingers which continued to stroke her hair. At last able to set free her grief, the girl cried for all of her dead in an unconstrained lamentation.

Many minutes later, Doctor Coffin patiently continued to caress the back of the head pressed against her side, with the rest of the other woman's unmoving body huddled up by the doctor while they shared their sofa. Inwardly thanking her lucky stars she'd barely touched her coffee, Karen estimated she could do this as long as necessary before giving into the demands of her own body. In the meantime, all which could be done was to wait-

A hoarse voice came from lower down on the sofa. Buffy wonderingly snuffled without lifting her head, "I thought we were here today to talk about Brandon, not me!"

Karen silently took some satisfaction at this indication her latest patient was beginning to recover from her sorrowful mood. The experienced therapist answered in a calm tone, "Buffy, _you're_ the one who needed my help now, and I'm more than willing to provide it. Just keep in mind you still have to deal further with your emotions. I strongly suggest when you go back home, you make an appointment with another grief counselor-"

"Oh, I'm already in therapy, Doctor Coffin," Buffy broke in the other's words.

Looking gratified, the medical professional announced, "Call me Karen, honey. That's good, you seeing someone. How're you doing so far with them?"

Contently feeling how her hair was still being caressed with utter compassion by Karen, Buffy willingly answered, "Elaine says I'm making progress. Though, I never had anything before with her like what I just did, going to pieces in front of you!"

Karen nodded in understanding, while telling the girl in her embrace, "Buffy, it's normal to have some inhibitions during your usual course of therapy. Even when you really want to open up, there's always a certain level of self-consciousness about sharing your deepest feelings with some stranger."

A rather sheepish Buffy pointed out in her muffled voice, "Um, that's kind of what _did_ happen here today, Karen."

Looking down at the head of the brave woman still pressed against her blouse, Karen gently patted Buffy's hair several times. The older woman next mused, "Everyone has their breaking point, honey. I was just lucky to be around to catch you when you fell. However, it'd be a shame to waste a real breakthrough. However it worked out, you've started to make actual progress in expressing your grief. Now that you've gotten past this, it should be much easier to talk it over with your doctor."

"I guess," Buffy said doubtfully.

After that comment, the Slayer finally let go from her lengthy hug of Karen. Straightening up on the sofa, Buffy watched how her companion gladly stretched out, to then move back to the other end of the sofa. In turn, Karen gave Buffy an inquiring look, as if expecting something more.

Sure enough, Buffy sadly confessed, "I…keep saying stuff like going home, what I'm going to do next. But, but Brandon doesn't have anything like that! He'll be…gone, and I just don't know how to deal with everything about it, right now or even afterwards! For example, Brandon won't even talk to me!" At that point, Buffy appeared as if she was about to start crying again.

"Buffy, listen to me," stated Karen in her firmest tone. This seemed to strike the correct note, with Buffy anxiously staring at her companion while the older woman begin to impart her hard-won wisdom.

"At this point, Brandon knows he's entering the final phase of his life, Buffy. This is causing him to react in a fairly normal manner for people approaching their death: he's accepting it."

A somewhat wry smile quirked the doctor's lips. "One of my patients early on in my career, he told me, 'You get used to anything, even the fact you're gonna croak. The weirdest part is, I'm actually starting to get a little bored with the whole business, believe it or not.' Well, even though I learned about that specific state of mind during my hospice training, it was something of a shock to encounter it the first time. But, I've seen it several times again, and Brandon's one more example of this."

An incredulous Buffy started to open her mouth. Except an extremely vivid memory then came to her. Of how after a girl living in Sunnydale learned about a certain prophecy, she'd completely given in to her conviction the Master would kill her. Even if it'd worked out for the best in the end, for years afterwards Buffy tried to avoid thinking about the horrible time when she'd been absolutely sure there was nothing to live for. This searing remembrance led to the young woman in the Maine farmhouse blurting out to a very surprised audience, "Brandon isn't feeling suicidal, is he?"

"_What?!_" exclaimed an astonished Karen. Gazing at the clearly worried woman at the other end of the sofa, the doctor resolutely shook her head.

Replying in her sternest temper, Karen declared, "No, Buffy! Put that idea completely out of your head! Causing fatal harm to yourself, in contrast to awaiting inevitable death, are two entirely different things. Brandon is _not_ committing suicide. He's taking his first steps into the next world, and part of that process involves withdrawing from this one."

"It's not because of anything I did?" asked an apprehensive Buffy. "I mean, I know I pretty much messed up by walking right into the middle of it all. Though, Brandon did kinda agree I could stay, even if he hasn't said a single word to me since."

Giving a regretful sigh, Karen then studied the nervous younger woman, and the doctor did her best to explain further. "Buffy, the most important thing here is Brandon. He's the one in charge of his death, and it's his choice on how to behave and what to care about now. Letting you stay was his decision, and he simply might not think anything else resulting from this is all that important."

When her listener seemed about to argue about this last comment, Karen lifted a silencing hand before continuing, "I know you're looking for some kind of reconciliation with your husband. That's common in these kinds of situations. But you _must_ accept that it's ultimately _Brandon's_ choice. It's very possible the both of you may never patch up your differences with each other during his remaining time, no matter how much you want this, Buffy. If that's the case, then all you can do is to support him in his last days. Doing otherwise, such as appealing to Brandon or putting some other kind of emotional pressure on him is in no way any act of kindness."

"Yes'm," mumbled Buffy, hanging her head in shame at the very thought of again behaving selfishly around the man she'd already hurt so much.

Hearing that abject agreement caused Karen to thoughtfully eye the subdued blonde. After a moment's further reflection, the doctor gently told Buffy, "For what it's worth, Brandon does know you're around. This'll be a tremendous comfort to him, even though he might not actually show it. I can assure you, from all my years in doing this, both at first hand and from other caretakers, the one thing terminal patients definitely want during it all is for their loved ones to be there."

Karen smiled sadly at Buffy's sudden look of astonishment. "Yes, honey, he still loves you."


	12. Chapter 12

A few minutes later, Karen glanced down at the head of the young woman again pressing her face once more against the doctor's body. For the second time today, the Maine native comfortingly hugged the sobbing Slayer. When the tears finally turned into sniffles, Karen decided it was time to go onto the next step. Gently gripping and then shaking Buffy's shoulders to get her attention, the older woman pulled away. Buffy straightened up in her seat, to next fumblingly take the wad of tissues offered by the doctor from this therapist's jacket pocket.

Wiping at her damp face, Buffy then heard Karen telling her in a straightforward manner the following, "Buffy, what you're going to have to do for the next week will probably be the hardest thing you've ever done."

An expression of pure surprise abruptly passed over the California girl's face. This had been expected by Karen, though the doctor was truly ignorant of exactly how far off the mark she was in saying that. But then, the longest-surviving vampire slayer in mankind's history was still keeping secrets from her companion. Nevertheless, satisfied she'd made her point, Karen went on to deliver her regretful news.

"Brandon's about to enter the closing stages of his illness. Within the next couple of days - maybe a week, but probably no more than that - he'll start to succumb."

A shocked Buffy immediately protested, "But, he looks fine-" Hastily remembering her husband's emaciated appearance, she hurriedly corrected this into, "I mean, nothing's changed!"

Sighing, Karen told the other woman clutching at her handful of tissues, "That's because the symptoms aren't overt. However, Brandon's starting to experience greater amounts of aching and lassitude, which are the signs his body's beginning to shut down. That will culminate in even more pain which only morphine and other strong opiates will ease. He'll soon also start to feel completely exhausted, and will want to do nothing but stay in bed. Once that last part happens, it's only a few more days to the end."

Staring in horror at the composed doctor, Buffy tremblingly whispered, "Wh- what do I do?"

Compassionately regarding the aghast girl, Karen told her in an equally kind voice, "Above all, _be_ there, no matter how hard it gets. And it will, particularly with the unpleasant details. I've got a morphine IV drip in my car, plus some other medical supplies. These will be set up by the hospice nurses, who'll come over-"

"No, I'll do it, everything."

At those unexpected words declared with absolute certainty by Buffy, it was Karen's turn to gaze in disbelief at the suddenly resolute younger woman. Thinking that her companion had no real idea of what she was getting into, Karen quickly attempted to explain, "Buffy, it takes actual medical training to provide the best possible care. Besides, that kind of work can get very, er, messy."

This last statement uttered by Karen produced from Buffy yet again something totally unforeseen by the doctor. The short, sardonic chuckle shortly issued by Buffy was accompanied by a rather strange expression on her face, seemingly nothing less than nostalgic bitterness.

Looking over at a dumbfounded Karen, Buffy next heaved a tremendous sigh of weariness, to then confide, "Karen, I told you about Sunnydale and the gangs there, remember? Well, me and my friends then, we set up a kind of neighborhood watch thing against those jerks. After a few brushes with them that sent a couple of us into the local ER, it seemed like a good idea to find out how to patch ourselves up. One of the doctors there who knew what we were doing, he showed us the more basic procedures, and I also volunteered as a candystriper at the hospital for a few months, picking it up for real. I learned how to bandage wounds, give shots, and do other nursing chores. It came in real handy over the years, even with me getting blood, puke, and other yucky stuff all over myself and my clothes lots of times. No, Karen, I'm not gonna be bothered by anything."

At the culmination of this speech, there was then a short silence between the pair of women, with these females steadily examining the other. Buffy bore Karen's thoughtful stare with equanimity. After all, apart from the whole 'gang' fabrication, her story was the complete truth. The Scooby Gang had of necessity often treated each others' minor injuries during their years together on the Hellmouth. This first aid had been done for what seemed to be good reasons at the time, usually because some of the more bizarre physical damage would've made even the most oblivious Sunnydale paramedic, nurse, or doctor wonder what the hell had inflicted those weird bites and claw marks.

Still, there'd always been some sort of unspoken recognition between the late-night staff at the local hospital and the increasingly-familiar teenagers and their older leader who'd regularly shown up there with more serious hurts needing genuine treatment by trained personnel. Nobody in the city hospital had ever come out and asked just what was going on, but during Buffy's second year at Sunnydale, she'd suggested to Giles and her friends at school during one library conference that they take advantage of this. Sure enough, without any kind of fuss or bother, Buffy and the other Scoobies soon got discreetly shown by a couple of tight-lipped people in white coats all sorts of methods for handling the ick factor which came with the fact of humans being basically walking bags of goop.

Eventually, Karen broke the room's quiet by remarking in a thoughtful tone, "That sounds good, Buffy, but there's a few things which have to be discussed first. You need to demonstrate your qualifications to us - that is, myself and the hospice caregivers. Also, about Brandon-"

"Oh, he already knows what I can do," interrupted Buffy, who earnestly went on at Karen's puzzled look, "A few weeks before we got married, Brandon cut his thumb making dinner at our apartment on campus. It was deep enough that I had to apply a dressing for it from our home medical kit, along with bandaging it in place. When we went to the college clinic to have it looked at, the nurse there said she couldn't have done it better herself. Afterwards, I told Brandon about learning first aid and the other stuff in Sunnydale, like I just did with you."

"That's good," nodded Karen. Clearing her throat, the doctor cautiously began all over again, "But, what I was about to say, Brandon will have to agree to this."

Buffy promptly deflated, mumbling a dismayed, "Oh."

Reaching across the sofa, Karen kindly patted Buffy's left knee several times. At the Slayer's surprise, Karen explained, "I'll be seeing Brandon later today as part of my regular counseling sessions with him. I'll bring it up, and with any luck, it won't be that hard to convince him to say yes to this. He knows I only want what's best for him, and once I tell Brandon I definitely think it's a good idea, he'll probably allow it. The fact is, he's already accepted you being here, so he might not be all that against you helping to take care of him."

Karen paused at seeing Buffy's eager face over hearing this potential good new. The older woman soon cautioned her listener, "Buffy, remember what I said before? You have to keep in mind, it's your responsibility not to bother Brandon. Be there and help him, but don't pester him. Plan ahead and set up things in advance to give him what he needs without Brandon having to ask."

Buffy obediently nodded at hearing all this, until Karen finished with, "Last of all is the most difficult part: don't ever let him see you cry."

"_Huh?!_" exclaimed a very startled Slayer.

Karen slowly shook her head. She told the other confused woman, "Doing that in front of Brandon, no matter how much you want to - and you will - just makes matters worse. Take a quick break outside, or go on a long walk when he's resting, and do your crying then. Most male terminal patients don't deal very well with tears, particularly from their family and other loved ones. In our society, they're used to keeping their emotions in check and being in control, enough to make them think they should still be macho even in the face of death. Yes, it's silly, but we've got to humor them."

Giving the stunned girl a pitying glance, Karen then gently added, "Honey, always keep in mind, you're doing it for him. And if you really need a shoulder to cry on, mine's always ready. I'll give you my cell number, and don't be afraid to use it anytime."

A moment later, the doctor was once more holding in her embracing arms a weeping Buffy. Patiently enduring her companion's latest emotional upheaval, Karen waited for the proper time to distract Buffy into other things. Fortunately, a topic from their recent conversation had actual promise to divert the grieving wife from her future bereavement. From all accounts, the impression Karen received during the younger woman's offhand comments about her time in Sunnydale was that for some reason, Buffy seemed to be divulging the qualified truth about this place while also leaving a great deal more unsaid. It was clear this girl had serious issues about her past life in that destroyed California city, and if Karen could help in any way, she'd willingly do this.


	13. Chapter 13

Later on in the day after a long talk with Buffy about her life since moving to Sunnydale had only made Karen even more intrigued about a certain young woman with a good many hidden secrets. The doctor then reluctantly left the Maine farmhouse to see her other patient. Buffy saw off Karen's car on her way to Brandon in the seaside cottage, remaining at Ed's home to wait for who she'd been told were coming. Sure enough, another car soon arrived, also parking in the Adamson driveway. Buffy went out to meet the pair of adults leaving their vehicle and standing there while watching with evident curiosity the young woman striding into their direction.

Cordial introductions were quickly made, with Buffy learning that Maria Hughes and Tony Connolly were the on-call hospice nurses involved in Brandon's case. After a moment's hesitation, Buffy confirmed what Karen had explained earlier during the doctor's phone call summoning the others, about her being the wife of their terminal patient. Expressions of real sympathy speedily appeared on Maria and Tony's faces at hearing their new acquaintance hadn't even known until today about her husband's illness, since they'd been separated at the time.

Despite this, a tactful but very thorough cross-examination was quickly conducted by the nurses over Buffy's expressed desire to care for Brandon. These medical personnel both appreciated and respected the sentiments behind this, but regardless of what Buffy wanted, the only thing which really mattered was the well-being of their patient. Still, the Slayer shortly convinced Tony and Maria she did indeed have the experience and training to properly take care of Brandon. Now all that was needed was for this dying man himself to agree, followed by a practical demonstration of Buffy's nursing skills.

Maria called Karen on her cellphone, with the three people at the farmhouse being told by the doctor they were expected, and should come now to the beach cottage. There was a short delay due to Buffy placing in the trunk of the nurses' car several grocery bags filled with food and other necessities given to her by Ed. This farmer was still busy elsewhere on his land, with Buffy having no idea how to then find him and thank Ed for his generosity. So, a hasty note left was left by Buffy on the kitchen table for the elderly man to read later, with her scribbling on this sheet of paper the latest information and also adding her profuse gratitude for all his kindness.

The hospice personnel took Buffy with them in their car all the way to the beach cottage, parking besides Karen's own vehicle in front of this small house. The doctor herself was waiting for them on the porch. When they were all there together, Karen at once told Buffy that Brandon had just indifferently shrugged in acceptance at being asked if he'd allow his wife to take care of him. Buffy brightened at this good news, only to have Karen also caution her it wasn't quite that easy. Brandon needed to verbally consent before witnesses regarding this, along with the married couple's signature on numerous legal forms to cover any possible eventualities. At that point, Karen expectantly glanced at Tony, who nodded, and went back to his car. A few moments later, the male nurse returned, this time carrying in his hands a stack of the necessary documents. With this done, Karen escorted everyone inside the cottage to the rear living room, where Brandon was placidly waiting.

The skeletal man seated in his armchair maintained his passive mood throughout everything which next occurred. In a tired but steady voice, Brandon authorized the transfer of his care from the hospice nurses, and he also patiently signed every paper placed before him. Buffy in her own chair had to co-sign a good many of these forms. During this, she learned Maria the nurse was also a notary public. Watching that caregiver expertly stamp the completed legal forms passed along to her, Buffy couldn't help sneaking a glance at Brandon out of the corner of the Slayer's eye. However, her husband didn't react at all to the proximity of his wife or even show anything other than a total lack of interest over the entire proceedings.

Feeling more than a bit disconcerted about this evident apathy, Buffy nevertheless soon handed over to Maria the very last legal document which involved Brandon's rejection concerning any kind of extreme measures to be used in his case. A final stamp attesting to its validity was made to this paper by the nurse, who then carefully collected and stacked the forms. Once these were put aside, a medical kit brought in from their car by Tom was placed on the table. Looking up at the hospice personnel, Buffy blinked at the expectant stares from this trio.

Clearing his throat, Tom opened the medical kit and he quickly and professionally laid out on the table a plastic sterilized tray taken from the kit which already had several objects resting upon the tray. At that point, he nodded at the tray and its contents and stepped back, all while politely requesting that Buffy now demonstrate her practical nursing skills to them by giving Brandon a shot of a strong painkiller.

It'd been a while, but after Buffy got up from her chair and began, the all-too-familiar habits swiftly came back. She pulled on the latex gloves and then opened the sealed antiseptic wipe ready for rubbing onto Brandon's arm prior to the injection. Holding the wipe in one gloved hand, the Slayer then turned to her husband, only to hesitate for a moment. However, when Brandon continued to seemingly ignore her, Buffy advanced towards this man's armchair. Stopping at its side to bend over slightly, she reached out to tug up the short sleeve of Brandon's sweatshirt.

Again, Buffy paused.

Not just because this was the first time since the presumed end of their marriage when she would be touching the person she'd once vowed to spend the rest of her life together in holy matrimony.

Almost as heartbreaking was what Buffy couldn't help but stare at, Brandon's arm. That limb was now passively held ready for her administrations. In the past, this man had used his muscular arm to willingly wrap around Buffy's body to show all his expressed love and affection for the girl who'd chosen to marry him. Now, the Slayer realized with a sudden sick feeling in her stomach, that if she currently clasped her fingers onto Brandon's wasted upper arm, these digits would have a good chance of wrapping entirely around it.

Abruptly becoming conscious of the silent observers from the hospice, Buffy forced herself to disregard both her watering eyes and the choking lump in her throat. She gently lifted Brandon's shirt sleeve to check for a vein on his arm. Sadly, there was no problem whatsoever in finding a suitable blood vessel, since these were quite evident under his yellowish skin. Gritting her teeth to keep from further breaking into tears, Buffy carefully wiped the antiseptic pad several times along the point she'd selected on her husband's arm. Once finished, the young woman straightened up and she turned back to the medical kit on the table, genuinely thankful her face was mostly hidden from the others in the room.

Instead, the trio continued to keenly watch while Buffy carried out the rest of her required task with apparent skill. The filled hypodermic syringe was collected and then this clear plastic cylinder was tapped to remove any possible air bubbles. Buffy also depressed the plunger a fraction to allow a drop of analgesic to appear at the needle tip, to then finally inserting with smooth expertise the syringe into Brandon's arm and dispensing in there the painkiller. Buffy went on to extract the syringe just as competently, and she returned this to the table in the proper 'used' section of the medical kit. Next, the Buffy selected from the kit a necessary bandage for the small injection mark. Busy with opening and then applying the bandage, Buffy didn't notice how Karen, Maria and Tony were exchanging approving glances among themselves.

Despite the Slayer's recent attempt to conceal her feelings by concentrating on nothing else but the job of attending to Brandon, the others knew exactly how hard it'd been for her to do what they'd just seen. By now, all of the medical professionals there deeply respected the young woman for still carrying out her painful duty as caringly as possible.

Glancing at where the man in his armchair was already beginning to doze off from the powerful opiate doing its work, Karen gently told the girl with tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks as she watched her dying husband, "Buffy, he can be put to bed now. Tony, Maria, you-"

"No, I'll do it," Buffy barely managed, interrupting both the doctor and the pair of named nurses just about to come forward and move their former patient to his bed. While the others watched with some confusion which quickly changed into growing astonishment, they saw a tiny woman who was clearly much stronger than she appeared now bend over the armchair. Hands reached out, one under the seated man's knees, and the other going behind Brandon's back. An instant later, Buffy effortlessly straightened up, with her now-slumbering husband cradled in her arms.

With genuinely startled looks on their visages (which at any other time would've amused Buffy), Karen and the nurses hastily made way for the Slayer bearing her far-too-light burden from the living room into Brandon's bedroom a few steps away. Buffy then delicately laid her husband down on the bed and she pulled over his sleeping body the quilt atop the sheets.

While doing this, Buffy heard her companions quietly departing the beach cottage. A minute later, after a quick trip to the bathroom to wipe clean her teary face, Buffy rejoined Karen on the front porch. This was just in time to see the nurses' car driving off, and then to notice several cardboard boxes piled on the porch deck next to where Karen was standing.

Seeing where she was looking, Karen waved a hand there, to explain, "I brought more medical supplies and food for you and Brandon, Buffy."

The California native nodded thankfully in response. She'd earlier accepted with reluctance the groceries pressed upon her by Ed, inwardly vowing to one day pay him back. However, as appreciated as these foodstuffs from this farmer were, they alone wouldn't completely satisfy a Slayer's appetite. Taking advantage of today's visit by Karen and the others from the hospice, Buffy had asked these people to bring along even more provisions in addition to those just carried in by Tom from his car. Everyone had been more than willing to do so, since it was all part of the normal functions provided by this Maine institution for terminal patients and their families.

Indeed, Karen thoughtfully eyed the stack of crates. She told Buffy, "There's enough meals there, both frozen and canned, for the next week. Call us if you run short or need anything else. Oh, by the way, when you heat up your food on the stove, be sure to air out the kitchen during this and afterwards. Just the smell of cooking alone can make Brandon feel ill now."

The doctor's helpful advice delivered in her brisk tone managed to steady Buffy a little. The Slayer gratefully acknowledged, "Thanks for everything, Karen."

"It's what I do, honey," replied the older woman, a faint, sad smile on her mature features. Karen next stepped closer to the blonde, trading a quick hug with her.

Still in their embrace, Doctor Coffin pulled back her head to look down full into Buffy's face. She compassionately reminded her, "Take care of him, and yourself too, through it all, Buffy. Let things take their natural course. Above all, be kind. That'll help you keep the courage I know you've got."

"Yes, mo- ma'am," Buffy unthinkingly started. Except, she then stopped short, to flush bright brick-red. Buffy blinked away sudden tears while hanging her head at what she'd just been about to call Karen. But, how else could she have reacted, after hearing this directed in a dearly-missed maternal tone towards herself?

Still hugging Buffy, the doctor merely allowed her smile to widen a bit. She leaned forward to plant a soft kiss upon the smaller woman's forehead. When this unexpected act caused Buffy to glance up in sudden disbelief, Karen tenderly chuckled, "I don't mind. In fact, I'd really have liked to meet Joyce Summers, just so I can tell her how proud she should be of her brave daughter."


	14. Chapter 14

Inside the darkness of the beach cottage, Buffy made an infinitesimal shrug of her shoulders at remembering those final words from ten days ago. This young lady wasn't all that sure how she'd behaved since then might possibly be called brave. She'd just…done the best she could.

* * *

The next few days spent together by Buffy and Brandon in the small seaside home had been a little awkward. At least, for _her._

Regarding the other resident, Brandon continued to pay virtually no heed to his guest, neither talking to her much less openly acknowledging Buffy's presence save for submitting to her ministrations. Aside from this, the dying man carried out his usual activities in a trancelike state, drifting through the following days.

First, he'd wake up in the morning and come to the kitchen. Seated there, Brandon passively took his painkiller injection from Buffy and then the man choked down a bottle of nutritional supplement taken from the refrigerator. Afterwards, he'd go back to bed, and spend hours dozing in there, visiting the kitchen again for the next reluctant combination of care and sustenance.

The few times when Brandon seemed to gather up his remaining strength was in two pursuits. For the first activity, usually at noon after lunch, he'd shamble out of the cottage to then cautiously pick his way along the beach and over the gravel road for about an hour or so. The man would make several trips across the entire small cove, intently examining the details around him. This included the ground, the hills rising up around the cottage, and the greenery clinging to these slopes. Brandon could spend a solid fifteen minutes just standing there at the foot of a hillside, his gaze slowly traveling upwards to scrutinize every bit of the terrain.

When done with this, Brandon would head back to the cottage, clearly exhausted. Receiving another injection, the man would then return to his bed. The only incentive for Brandon to leave his bedroom during the rest of the day was if he had one of his rare callers. This was usually Ed Adamson, either alone or with one or both of his daughters along, and perhaps Karen, too. If this was the case, Brandon would be contentedly awaiting them in the rear living room, to spend the next several hours delighting in their company. After his visitors departed, Brandon would remain sitting in his chair for the rest of the day well into the evenings. Taking another meal and injection there, he would silently stare out at the Atlantic in all its moods while the sun sank into the hills behind the beach cottage.

Throughout all this, Buffy strove to remain as unobtrusive as possible. The young woman prepared her own meals well before Brandon ate. When cooking was necessary, the Slayer followed Karen's advice and she made sure to thoroughly air out the kitchen afterwards. Throughout her husband's daily walks, Buffy would discreetly trail along after him, completely disregarded all the while, while sadly watching someone clearly bidding farewell to a beloved home for the last time ever.

Buffy's diffident attitude was maintained even when others would've been more than willing to have her there during their visits. After some discussions at the family farmhouse, Karen, Ed, Hannah, and Helen agreed to not bring up Buffy's absences in giving them privacy when they came to the beach cottage. Since Brandon choose to continue never acknowledging his wife's presence, the Maine natives went along with this, if only because of Buffy's unashamed pleas for them to likewise defer in pressing the issue. Whenever Brandon's guests came over, they'd meet Buffy on the porch, have a quick word with her as to how things were going, and then the Slayer would depart to somewhere else, usually out of earshot on the beach or up in the hills around the cove.

Just about when Brandon showed signs of exhaustion during their conversations, one of the visitors would excuse themselves for a bathroom break. In there, they'd use their cellphone to call Buffy, telling her they'd be leaving in the next few minutes. With Slayer speed, it was easy enough for Buffy to come back at once, even if she was a mile or more away while gazing out at the ocean from around the cove.

At the end of the day, Buffy would sit unnoticed in the rear living room, mutually watching with Brandon the fall of night over the Atlantic waters. Again, not a single word was ever shared between the couple. Yet despite it all, Buffy never became bored.

Not just because it would've been utterly insensitive, feeling tired and resentful while waiting for Brandon to die. Instead, Buffy found somewhat to her astonishment that she was actually beginning to appreciate the quietude of her stay, no matter the woeful reason for it.

In this rare break from her busy life of being the most experienced Slayer ever and working for the Council while caring for little Harry, Buffy could finally do what her therapist Elaine had been urging for a while. She'd been reviewing once more all of her past since being Called, every bit of the good and the bad from Hemery High on. It'd been part of her therapy from the first, but now in the beach cottage, Buffy could further re-evaluate the progress she'd made in seeking atonement for all the harm she'd done to those around her. Indeed, throughout her penance, the young woman had managed a good start in this among her former Sunnydale comrades, resulting in the restoration of the once-close trust and affection Buffy had shared with Willow, Giles, and Faith.

Dawn, of course, had forgiven her long ago, and Xander…

Lost in her thoughts over the time she spent in the subdued cottage living room with Brandon while they watched the ocean together, Buffy's lips often curved in a sad but proud smile. Of all the things others might think she would be most satisfied about - the numerous apocalypses prevented, an equal quantity of Big Bads thwarted, her own sheer survival to set a personal record for a Slayer's continued existence - Buffy now knew she'd never do anything more important for the rest of her life than to make Xander Harris and Harry James Potter Harris happy forever.

It'd taken so long for her to realize that, and in the process, she'd lost her way all too many times. Buffy mentally went over the men who'd at once time or the other had been vitally important to her: Pike, Angel, Riley, Spike, and the rest. For good or ill, they'd shaped her, to make Buffy Summers the person she was now. And it'd ended with her at last granting her heart and soul to someone who was humbled beyond belief at receiving this ultimate gift - which in turn made Buffy cherish Xander even more.

This left only one final task…

In all the time he spent in his own spot in the living room, Brandon never gave any indication he was aware of Buffy's occasional steady regard of him during their time together. In return, Buffy never presumed to violate their peculiar closeness for the most simple of reasons: she had absolutely no right whatsoever to act otherwise.

At the small seaside house, Buffy now confronted and accepted her immense guilt over her sudden separation from Brandon back then, who himself bore no responsibility nor blame for this unexpected event. Instead, he'd been absolutely faithful to his wife. On the other hand, Buffy failed to discuss with him her abrupt doubts about their marriage. It couldn't be called anything but marital blindsiding when she'd announced to him that it'd been all a mistake between themselves and then walked out on him.

Even if their seeming divorce hadn't really resulted in an actual sundering of their married state, this in no way excused Buffy. Mere apologies, such as given to those who'd undergone the Sunnydale Hellmouth with her, wouldn't be sufficient to make amends for all the hurt she'd caused this person in the past.

No, if need be, Buffy would at this point suffer in equal measure from whatever punishment Brandon was presently dictating for her. Despite what Karen had previously said about the dying man's growing indifference to the world he'd soon be leaving behind, Buffy didn't quite think this entirely explained Brandon's silent treatment of his wife. Rather, if this was in fact some sort of indirect payback against someone who'd previously acted with no concern for anyone but her own feelings, Buffy had to secretly admit that this was well into Anyanka-level vengeance. And she deserved every bit of it.

Oddly enough, this also gave Buffy a strange sense of encouragement. She'd sorely struggled throughout her earlier apologies to the Scoobies, but however difficult it'd been to earn, this eventual forgiveness the Slayer received from those she'd wronged was definitely worth it. Now, Buffy had to do it all over again, whatever the cost. Which emotional price could certainly include total failure, best defined here as her being unable to gain Brandon's absolution before it was too late.

If so…then she'd simply live with this disappointment and her resulting regrets, without blaming anyone, even herself. Like any other adult making their way through the world, Buffy would take what comfort she could in knowing that at least she'd tried her best. As she was doing right now, carefully respecting all the boundaries an unspeaking Brandon was maintaining. That would have to be enough, until the end. However soon this would come in due time.

The end started on Buffy's tenth day at the beach cottage.


	15. Chapter 15

Just like Karen had told her, even the most heartbreaking moments could become nearly routine. At a week and a half into their regular schedule, Buffy was now almost accustomed to it all. She'd had breakfast before Brandon woke up, cleaned the kitchen well in advance of his usual visit there for a meal and his injection. When her husband left the cottage to make another walk around outside shortly in the afternoon, Buffy dutifully followed along several paces behind him. Throughout everything, as if it was apparently normal for them, not a word had been exchanged between the pair of young people.

Things irrevocably changed when Brandon came to the hill on the south side of the beach cottage. Expecting him to look around for a while and then head back to bed as he'd done so often before, Buffy patiently observed the skeletal man staring upwards at the slope of the hill. Brandon's gaze followed the dirt trail which his wife had taken all the way to the top of the hill on her first day here, to then dash deeper into the Maine forest stretching inland from the small clearing at the hill's peak.

Over the week when Brandon was staying in the house with his other visitors, Buffy had repeated this hike, presumably to give her husband time with Karen, Ed, or whomever else while also getting some needed exercise. Aware that she might be seen during this, the Slayer restrained herself while ascending no faster than a normal person along the trail. Only when completely out of sight from the cottage below did Buffy gladly allow herself a brief sprint at full-out superhuman speed through the clearing into the trees ahead until it was time for her to go back to the summer residence.

Thinking about this, Buffy's attention was abruptly distracted by Brandon stepping forward to start climbing the dirt trail all on his own.

Her jaw dropping, Buffy gawked at Brandon already several yards up the trail. He was also beginning to breathe deeply at this unaccustomed exertion, with these gasps for air all too audible to Buffy's keen hearing. Worriedly trotting forward, Buffy caught up right away with Brandon still determinedly pressing on. Ignoring the woman now at his heels and matching him stride for stride while staying within arm's reach, Buffy started to pant for real halfway up the hill.

Buffy unconsciously reached forward to lay her hand upon Brandon's shoulder in preparation for asking him to please stop. If he wanted to look out at the Atlantic from a higher position, this was already far enough. The man's struggles for air were now really alarming, with Brandon also starting to tiredly hunch over during his nonstop climb.

Just before calling out his name, Buffy abruptly snatched back her fingers. Sufficiently close to nearly breath down his neck, she'd caught a glimpse of Brandon's sweating, pale face, which was now set in a grimly intent expression of absolute purpose. He clearly wasn't going to cease in his reckless endeavor, not even with how much this had to be costing him in terms of stamina, of which Brandon had far too little to spare.

Silently crying, Buffy let her husband continue without any outspoken protest by this woman. All she could do instead was to stay as close as possible without actually touching him, until she had a good reason to do otherwise. Yet, this never happened. In a feat of incredible willpower, Brandon fought his exhausted way step by step up the entire hill. This was done without every losing his balance by toppling backwards or collapsing onto the dirt trail. A frantic Buffy wasn't ashamed in hoping for either, since those seemed to be the only outcomes capable of preventing Brandon from killing himself.

Blinking away her tears, which the stiff ocean breeze rapidly dried upon her cheeks, Buffy was still right behind Brandon when he made his final tottering steps into the clearing at the summit of the hill. The man finished his journey by lurching off towards the open, grassy side closest to the unfenced seaside edge of the lookout point atop this cliff. Brandon halted in his tracks to fixedly stare for a few moments forward over the ocean far below. Then, he glanced down at the ground, sighed deeply once, and began to crumple onto his knees.

Her Slayer reflexes allowed Buffy to gently grab Brandon in time to prevent his fainting body from falling more than an inch or so. Easily picking up her unconscious spouse to cradle him in a set of powerful arms, Buffy momentarily also shot a quick gaze at where Brandon had been looking. She next turned around to sprint at her fastest speed down the trail towards the beach cottage.

On the way there, among her anxious thoughts was the remembrance of seeing two rectangular stone plaques embedded in the rocky floor of the lookout point. Buffy hadn't ever noticed these unobtrusive objects earlier during her previous visits, since she'd always passed by them to the Maine forest beyond the clearing. Plus, the plaques had been mostly hidden by the grass which had grown around the simple inscriptions of:

JAMES MARTIN

1957 - 1997

ELIZABETH MARTIN

1958 - 1997

* * *

That night, Buffy sat in the beach cottage's living room. Hooked up to a morphine IV line on its stand next to his bed recently moved into the room, Brandon was fast asleep, tucked under the covers.

Most of the last couple of hours had been a time of sheer anguish for Buffy. Once she'd returned to the beach house with the comatose man, the Slayer gently put him to bed. Then, she made a hasty call to Karen on her cellphone. This hospice doctor had been as kind as possible, telling Buffy this was in no way her fault. Brandon had clearly done what he wanted, and now all they could do was to wait for what was approaching. Karen promised to come at once, and to bring along Ed Adamson and the others.

A while later, Buffy found herself out on the porch, watching a now-familiar car driving towards the small house. When Karen and three more people got out, the doctor was carrying her medical bag handed to her by Ed who'd been holding it in his lap along the way. Stepping onto the porch, Karen glanced at where Buffy sadly shook her head in return. This younger woman further confirmed, "There's been no change from what I told you on the phone. He still hasn't woken up."

Karen nodded, "All right, I'll go check on him. It may take a few minutes. In the meantime, give us some privacy, please."

After hearing the murmurs of agreement from the rest, Karen briskly entered the cottage, with the front door closing after her. The other two women seized their chance to advance up in turn onto the porch, and they both gave Buffy comforting hugs. Both Helen and Hannah had become good friends to the Slayer over the last several days. Buffy had been more than willing to listen to these Maine ladies talk about what it'd been like growing up here when Brandon was visiting their farm during the summers his family stayed at the beach cottage. Once these pair of daughters finished embracing Buffy, she looked past them to see the sorrowful figure of Ed standing rather forlornly at the bottom of the porch.

Acting purely on impulse, Buffy moved past the older women clustered around her. She clattered down the porch stairs and stopped in front of Ed, just before giving him a good, strong hug of her own. Though, she prudently curbed her superhuman strength so that the startled look instantly appearing on Ed's lined face wasn't due to any excessive squeezing of him. His features shifting into a more reserved expression of quiet pleasure, the farmer drawled down at Brandon's wife now letting go and stepping back, "You didn't have to do that, Buffy, but thank you."

"No, thank you, Ed, for all _you've_ done." Buffy bestowed a most melancholy smile upon the aged man. Turning around in a half-circle, she put her arm through the crook of his elbow while they both took the stairs side by side. Arriving on the deck at where Hannah and Helen were awaiting them, Buffy still holding onto Ed's arm tilted her head in evident thought. The girl next asked him, "Ed, do you know anything about the carved rocks up on the hill there, with the names of Brandon's mom and dad on them?"

Looking down again at the small, brave girl he'd come to like very much, Ed promptly replied, "Oh, I put 'em there a few months after the accident. Jim and Beth, they told me and Mary, they really liked watching the ocean and having picnics with their boy, that kind of thing, from the lookout. I couldn't think of a better place to put the memorial plaques for them than there. Told Brandon that too, in our last letters to him. When he showed up here after getting sick, he wanted to see 'em right away. Of course, I took him, even though he had a hard time getting up there. When we made it, he was really glad about 'em, and asked me for a favor…"

The sudden silence descending upon the small group on the porch after Ed trailed off in his reminisces was brought on by all of them remembering why they were here together now. This resulting quiet lasted until the cottage door opened again. Karen came out, and looked around at the expectant foursome gazing back at her.

Doctor Coffin steadily said, "Brandon's awake now, but as might be expected, he's in a great deal of pain. I've put him on a morphine drip, which helped. He's reasonably coherent, and when I told him all of us were here, he wants to see you. Only one of you at a time, though. Hannah, Helen, Ed, go in that order, and no more than ten minutes at a time for each of you. Any more than that, he'll probably fall asleep again."

A distressed Helen asked, "How much longer does Brandon have?"

Karen could only shrug helplessly. "Not very long, but there's no way to be more specific. It could be five minutes or five days, with neither all that likely. Soon, I'm afraid. You all know the drill. Treat every visit like it's the last one. Hannah, are you ready?"

With brimming eyes she hastily wiped clear, the oldest Adamson daughter nodded and she then went through the front door Karen was holding open for her. Waiting until Hannah disappeared into Brandon's bedroom, Karen told the others, "Come in with me quietly, all right? We're going to clear out the living room so Brandon's bed can be moved in there, like he wants."

This was quickly done, with all four of them working away. When they were finished, Buffy immediately took the opportunity for a needed distraction from the soft conversation nearby she was doing her best not to listen onto with her Slayer hearing.

"Karen, is Brandon still insisting on no extreme measures? I thought so, what with you not bringing an ambulance and taking him to the hospital, but I want to be sure."

"Oh, yes," firmly answered Doctor Coffin. "That hasn't changed the slightest in the directions he gave us, both then and right now. No more than we can supply for the pain. That's enough for him, as is his right. We'll move Brandon to the hospital from here if he asks, but otherwise, there's no point. I've thoroughly discussed it with him, and I'm satisfied he understands there's really nothing else that can be done."

Carefully eyeing the somber-faced girl she was speaking to, Karen continued, "The question is right this minute, do _you_ understand, Buffy? Not just that Brandon will pass on soon, but you have no choice or control over anything he previously set out on how it'll end. The papers you signed as his wife gave you the legal power to stay here and care for him instead of us, but otherwise you can't override Brandon's wishes at all."

Karen saw Buffy flinch a fraction at this, but the older woman thought this was merely due to a foretaste of the impending future grief for Brandon's wife and soon-to-be widow. Naturally, the Maine doctor couldn't know exactly how dangerous the particular w-word was which she'd just mentioned.

In a barely audible tone, Buffy softly answered, "Yes, I know what it means, Karen."

The Slayer paused, to wearily scrub at her face for a moment, before continuing, "Look, I need to take a walk, okay? I'm going out on the beach for a while. When you want me here again, come out on the porch and wave. That'll be enough." Giving the others in the living room listening to this a stiff nod of her head, Buffy turned and with a straight back, she fled from the house.

Ed and Helen simultaneously glanced at where Karen was standing, a very resigned look upon her own visage. Seeing she was the focus of their attention now, the doctor simply shrugged and went over to the nearest couch pushed against the far wall to leave a clear space in the middle of the room. Taking a seat there, Karen waved a hand in inviting the others to sit, adding, "Let her have a little bit of privacy now. She really needs it."

Nodding in shared sympathy, the father and his youngest daughter silently joined Karen in their deathwatch.

A brisk hike soon had Buffy nearly to the far right side of the cove, well out of hearing range from the cottage. Stopping along the beach a few yards from where the surf was surging onshore, the Slayer pulled out her cellphone from a pants pocket, and she hit the redial button on this to call an extremely restricted number.

Waiting with increasing impatience until a familiar voice at last answered her, Buffy pleadingly broke into a witch's beginning words, "Wils, _please_ tell me you were wrong, that you can help Brandon now!"


	16. Chapter 16

Several minutes later, a numb Buffy put away her cellphone, and she shuffled towards a nearby beachside boulder. The Slayer then heavily sat down onto this low rock without any sign of her normal graceful movements. Unseeingly gazing out over the indifferent ocean, Buffy struggled to accept what she'd been told again today. It was just as hard to take this reiteration of unwelcome news as the first time a few days ago, when Willow reluctantly informed Buffy there was nothing even the most powerful witch in the world could do for a dying man.

They'd been in the beach cottage living room then at well past midnight, after Willow discreetly teleported into the house and next cast a scanning spell upon a fast-asleep Brandon in his bed to confirm the witch's worse fears. Buffy was openly incredulous at hearing this unhappy admission of defeat, given all the other awesome things she'd seen the Wiccan easily accomplish in the past with her immense magic.

Unfortunately, her sheer might was part of the whole problem, an upset Willow enlightened Buffy. The witch went on to sadly explain that both magical healing and mundane medicine had several things in common. This specifically included two situations when they were applied to those who needed this treatment, whichever other differences the separate types of remedies might possess. Firstly, the sooner either were used to treat the patient, the better. Secondly, great care had to be used at all times to ensure only the proper amount and form of medication was used, since too much of the wrong kind of drugs or magic could result in death instead of the hoped-for cure.

At Buffy's look of baffled incomprehension, Willow pointed out there was a perfect example of this right at hand: Brandon's previous course of hospital therapy which he'd earlier undergone to no avail. If it'd been started earlier, there would've been a far better chance of actual success in alleviating Brandon's leukemia. However, this illness had been discovered only when it was virtually beyond effective treatment. Even so, this man's doctors tried their best, skillfully applying the maximum survivable dosages of chemicals and radiation while hoping for a remission of Brandon's blood cancer.

In the end, it clearly hadn't occurred. Equally obvious was that no other known medical treatment would work, much less trying chemotherapy and radiotherapy again on him at much higher levels. Brandon's body was now simply too weak to endure this again, so he'd resigned himself to dying and had gone off to spend his last remaining days at a beloved summer house in Maine.

Doggedly continuing in the face of Buffy's expressed objections that magic had to be different and more successful than anything else ordinary doctors might try, Willow forlornly but firmly stated, "Not this time, Buffy."

It was all due to Brandon's extreme physical fragility now, the witch further told her anguished friend. Any kind of healing magic used on him would naturally have to be enormously formidable in order to restore to health a man right on the brink of death. But, this also meant that these very same colossal supernatural energies could much more easily snuff out Brandon's life in an instant should anything at all go wrong in the spell. From what Willow had learned in her frantic studies after Xander came back alone to the Janna Kalderash School, this type of curative casting was almost impossible to pull off at such a late date. Searching endlessly through grimoires and other magical textbooks, along with privately discussing it with her fellow witches, had eventually convinced Willow that the odds of her achieving this were a good deal greater than a mere million-to-one chance.

Far more likely, she'd kill Brandon.

You couldn't ask for a better instance of 'extreme measures' than this. The medical term for drastic treatment which had next to no likelihood of success and was only applied as a last-ditch effort to save a patient was now on the table - and it was explicitly something which Brandon Martin had forbidden anyone to use upon himself. When Buffy revealed to Willow how she'd co-signed the legal documentation in which her husband had made quite clear he wasn't interested in undergoing any sort of stressful, futile therapy which would probably do nothing more than extend his life for a short, pain-wracked period, these grieving women spent the next couple of minutes quietly weeping together in each other's arms.

And now much later, Buffy was again in the living room, but this time with her husband. After her fruitless call to Willow and the Slayer's dejected stay on the beach for the next short while, Karen had come out to the porch about a half-hour later. As agreed, a wave of the doctor's hand summoned Buffy to help in moving Brandon to his new location. Just like before, Buffy had carried the sleeping man, but this time it was into her room and the bed there, with Ed carefully bringing along the stand with its IV attached to Brandon's arm. The aged farmer had stayed in the guest bedroom with what he considered his adopted son while the other four women ably finished the job of shifting Brandon's entire bed into the living room.

When that was finished, Buffy put Brandon back in his own bed, gently tucking him in. At no point during all this had he woken up. Nor did he stir even when Ed, Hannah, and Helen in turn came to sit by the bed, bent over, and each of them gave Brandon a last tender farewell kiss upon his forehead.

Watching this while standing to one side were Buffy and Karen, who'd slipped her arm around the younger woman's shoulders and had pulled her close in their caring hug for Buffy to lean her head upon the doctor's shoulder. This pair were still like that when the Adamsons joined them in a group embrace. The small group stayed in their gathering of comfort for each other, until they finally broke apart. Quiet goodbyes were made, and equally silently after one final lingering look at the man slumbering in his bed, Karen and the others who needed to go back to their own lives went off together in the doctor's car.

Buffy stood on the porch in the Maine afternoon sunlight glinting off the ocean, watching this vehicle disappear out of sight around the first turn beyond the beach cove. Only when even her Slayer hearing couldn't further distinguish the sound of the departing car over the low roar of the nearby surf did Buffy turn around and go back into the cottage. She walked down the short hallway, entered the living room, and took her seat in the armchair positioned next to Brandon's bed. Then for the next several hours while the day ended, an unmoving Buffy gazed out through the rear picture window at the Atlantic waves hypnotically rolling towards the Slayer.

Shortly before sunset, Brandon opened his eyes. Buffy was well aware of this, since her sensitive ears had easily noticed the change in the man's breathing while he was waking up. She continued to steadily stare ahead, though Buffy was also secretly looking at Brandon from out of the corner of an eye.

The man himself groggily glanced around for a few moments before blinking at where Buffy was sitting by his bed and seemingly not paying any attention to her husband. Sending in turn his own incurious expression at this young woman, Brandon slowly switched his awareness to the other side of the bed, where his IV stand was placed next to a small metal table. On this table was a wooden tray holding one of Brandon's nutritional supplement bottles, along with a plastic pitcher half-filled with water, and several paper cups. After a quick bathroom break several minutes previously, Buffy had brought all of this sustenance from the kitchen and put the table and its contents these in case Brandon wanted something to drink.

She continued to surreptitiously observe this man, and her heart sank at the weary grimace he bestowed on these liquids. It seemed that Brandon's loss of appetite had now advanced to include even water, which wasn't good. Indeed, this indifference to fluids was just one more sign his body was presently in the last stages of leukemia, with his kidneys beginning to fail. Buffy hopelessly waited for whatever Brandon would do next. In fact, he did nothing more than to settle back in the bed and join her in mutely watching the end of the day outside.

Time passed, and eventually Brandon returned to his drug-assisted slumber. His steady breathing was just like it'd always been in the past when they'd been sharing for real a marriage and a bed, which both thought would be for always with each other. Continuing to view the night-time ocean silvery gleaming in the bright moonlight from above, Buffy let herself drift through these precious memories, in however long she never knew.

Not when Brandon suddenly started choking in his sleep.

An alarmed Buffy immediately reached out to where Brandon flailing under the bedcovers had just thrown these off his upper body. Catching hold of his stick-thin arms as gently as possible to avoid injuring him, Buffy half-rose from her chair to lean over the man lying in his bed. She was now close enough to look him full in the face when Brandon's eyes snapped open, showing in their depths absolute terror as he desperately gasped for air.

The equally horrified Slayer also heard with her heightened hearing Brandon's heart begin to improperly falter in its normal rhythms. Freezing in shock, Buffy despairingly listened to this man's resulting massive heart attack, knowing that there was nothing she could do to prevent this. Any hospital or other effective medical treatment were also too far away to help at this point. Not even Willow with her magic could get here in time, when every second counted. Meanwhile, Brandon was clutching with ebbing strength by his skeletal fingers at Buffy's wrists and unseeingly staring up at his wife hovering above him.

Beginning to weep out loud, Buffy did the only thing she could think of. Pulling away her right arm from Brandon's fragile grip, she next hastily started continuously stroking with her palm the side of his frightened face going slack, up and down from temple to jaw and back again along his left cheek. Through her sobs, Buffy repeated over and over, "I'm here, Brandon, I'm here, I'm here, I won't leave, I'm here, please, Brandon…"

Brandon was barely conscious of this among the immense pressure in his chest, which felt like an elephant was sitting there. It didn't hurt very much anyway, not with all the morphine in him, so he instead continued to futilely fight for breath. Every inhalation grew weaker as his exhaustion grew, until Brandon finally...accepted it. He was just so tired of it all to endure any more, so the man let himself relax in his bed. It was now strangely peaceful, how the inner blackness was beginning to envelop his mind. Things were fading away, with even most physical impressions diminishing. Only the most intimate sensations were left, and he was rapidly drifting from those, too.

Feeling a last minor flicker of interest about this, Brandon felt a soft touch on his face, he heard a lessening familiar voice whose words he couldn't quite make out, and looked up through narrowing vision at-

*Oh. Buffy.*

Sinking into the ultimate night, Brandon managed one more thing in his life before he went entirely under.

Rocking back and forth in the armchair while she keened from her very soul, Buffy held onto a limp and already cooling hand. Her wails of grief grew as she further comprehended her husband's final action, with the evidence of this yet present upon that young man's still mouth.

Brandon Martin had smiled at Buffy Summers.


	17. Chapter 17

On a sunny Maine day some time later, a brisk wind was blowing hard at the Slayer's back. It pressed Buffy's black dress against her body while also plucking at the stray strands of blonde hair escaping from her tight bun. This strong breeze brought to the young woman's nose all the aromas of forest and field making the most of the last weeks of spring. These various smells of growing things had been carried from the interior to where Buffy was standing on top of the hill overlooking a snug beach cottage and the ocean beyond.

Disregarding the view which had become truly familiar over the past several weeks, Buffy instead watched how Ed Adamson was being helped to his feet by this man's daughters. Both Helen and Hannah stood on opposite sides of their father after all of them had carefully placed in the awaiting cavity excavated from the ground a stone plaque at its proper position, set centered below the two older inscribed stone tablets. Now, the trio consisting of an elderly farmer and his children moved back to stand off close by on the side of the lookout clearing.

From Buffy's left, a throat was softly cleared. She glanced over at where Doctor Coffin was patiently waiting, cradling in her arms a small wooden urn. Knowing this was her cue, Buffy reached out to take the proffered urn from Karen's hands, sharing a melancholy look with the hospice therapist. Turning, Buffy then strode forward, until she was in front of the stone plaque set in the ground just a minute ago. Sorrowfully looking down at this, the California girl read:

BRANDON MARTIN

1982-2007

FATHER, MOTHER, CHILD

TOGETHER

The four Maine natives sympathetically watching the former wife of a young man they'd all known and loved now saw her head abruptly lift. Buffy then stared out at the wide Atlantic, her face showing fleeting astonishment. Next, the woman's lips then curved into an entirely unexpected sweet, sad smile. Neither the Adamson family nor the doctor could resist following Buffy's gaze, but they saw nothing out beyond the hilltop which might possibly explain her sudden odd behavior.

The Slayer herself hadn't been expecting that soft mental voice which had just spoken inside her head. *Buffy, we're all here now. Let me show you.*

Right after this, over eight hundred miles away in Cleveland, Willow cast the remainder of her spell. It caused Buffy, and no one else, to see how hundreds of people now instantly materialized in a great semi-circle in front of the short blonde, with a gap empty of anyone directly in front of Buffy. All of these unanticipated onlookers were translucent, indicating they were here in spirit form only. Their images had been sent from all over the world at this exact moment by the Red Witch's magic.

Despite the somber occasion, Buffy inwardly felt the merest glimmer of amusement over being glad that nobody had actually teleported here. Considering all of the intangible spectators were from twenty to sixty feet ahead of where Buffy was at the hilltop, those people joining the funeral ceremony off the Maine coast now appeared as if they were standing on thin air about fifty yards above the breaking ocean waves below them.

Buffy's passing delight over the minor absurdity promptly turned into thankful wonder, as she then realized all of these unforeseen visitors had appeared here simply to be with her at the memorial service for Brandon Martin. A man they'd in the main had never known, but who'd been for a short time the husband of Buffy Summers. A man who'd loved her and been loved by her, with this Slayer also regarded with as much devotion and esteem by numerous others now here. They'd willingly come together today to offer Buffy their support and consolation in her time of loss.

Her eyes filling with grateful tears, Buffy slowly examined all there dressed in their most formal clothing, as fitting to pay their respects on this day of mourning. Many of them she knew, and while meeting the gazes of these Watchers and Slayers and other Council personnel, they nodded back, or bowed, or curtseyed, or otherwise indicated their genuine deference in the normal manner of their societies.

An overcome Buffy managed to merely lower her eyes in response, not wanting to do anything which might cause her fellow mourners on the hilltop to start uneasily speculating if this widow was about to start breaking down in her misery. Accepting expressions now appeared upon the features (both human and inhuman) of the majority of the crowd, indicating they understood this. This same audience also weren't offended by Buffy then directing her attention to those there which she most wanted to see.

Giles and Dawn were the first, on the far right of the forefront of the small contingent. The grey-haired Englishman in his black suit was standing behind the younger Summers sister, his arms comfortingly wrapped in paternal care around Dawn. They both directed compassionate glances at the Slayer. Buffy sent back an appreciative quirk of her lips, to then shift her gaze at the other people waiting next to her Watcher and the Key.

Willow was dabbing at her eyes with a damp handkerchief. The witch lowered this soaked cloth to mournfully nod at Buffy. At her side, a man tenderly placed his hand upon her shoulder, squeezing this gently in the same empathy the Scooby Gang had learned to expect from Daniel Osbourne. A calm Oz also fractionally tilted his head forward in stoic commiseration towards Buffy. This got the laid-back werewolf another indebted look from the Slayer, along with a last lingering glance from that woman at Oz's unaltered coiffure. For the first time she could ever recall, her friend from high school was willingly showing to everyone that he had natural light brown hair.

Another surprise was awaiting Buffy when her gaze continued to sweep the crowd, to suddenly stop as her eyes widened in actual astonishment. Faith was there, clad in a perfectly appropriate black dress and hands decorously clasped in front of herself. Once the other Slayer was sure she had the blonde's full attention, Faith let her arms fall open to hang at her sides. The Boston-born female then bowed deeply to Buffy Summers.

There was a profound sadness upon Faith's features as she straightened up. The brunette clearly knew just how her once-enemy felt at this very moment, since after the Sunnydale collapse it'd turned out they'd now both lost people close to them.

Clutching the carved urn in her hands against her chest, Buffy bowed equally deeply back to Faith. She didn't care at all what the others around at the hilltop might think. Though, the rest of the Maine mourners probably believed she was merely expressing her silent goodbyes. They seemed to be willing enough to accept this, as shown by their forbearance as they patiently waited for Buffy to perform one last task. Which the Slayer would indeed carry out, but not until she found one last pair in the crowd of ethereal witnesses.

They were easy enough to find. Of all the restrained onlookers, only one delighted person there was frantically waving both arms in his infant frenzy to catch her attention. Regardless of the solemnity of the occasion, Buffy couldn't help but to smile a bit at seeing how Harry was struggling in his foster-father's firm cuddle. The little boy's mouth was wide open, with him evidently yelling at the top of his healthy lungs. Buffy took a hasty moment to be glad for Willow's prudence in preventing anyone but the Slayer to see or hear anything through the witch's spell. Otherwise, Buffy's companions would've been downright thunderstruck at listening to a child's noisy demand for "MOMMA!" mysteriously coming from out of nowhere.

Buffy continued to watch in tender affection while Xander expertly calmed Harry down, whispering reassuringly into his son's ear. Eventually, the youngster stopped squirming in a vain attempt to escape from a one-eyed man's arms and then toddle as fast as possible to where his mommy was standing there. Instead, a rather uncertain wave was again sent by Harry towards Buffy, his other arm wrapped around his daddy's neck. The little boy then quickly looked into the proud face of his father to see if he'd done the right thing. Xander planted a pleased kiss on Harry's chubby cheek, making the child happily giggle. Then, Harry sloppily kissed Xander back under this man's eyepatch.

Buffy's heart melted. In that instant, she fully understood if there was life, there was death, and where there was death, there was also life. But above all, there was family.

Brandon had been part of her family, and he always would be in her mind. Just as she would always be family to Harry and Xander, to Dawn and Giles, to Faith and Willow and Oz, and so many more in the past, in the present, and in the future.

On the Maine hilltop, four people watching a young woman saw her stare ahead, out towards the Atlantic. A look of pure joy and acceptance was now upon her face. Buffy Summers-Martin-Harris lifted high the wooden urn in her hands.

This was one of three identical urns. The two other diminutive chests were in Buffy's luggage recently placed in the trunk of Karen's car waiting to go to the airport. Soon, those urns and their divided contents would accompany Buffy home to Cleveland, though there'd be a side trip first for the Slayer. Buffy had already made the arrangements for placing one of the urns at the gravesites of James and Elizabeth Martin. And the very last urn, it would be lovingly buried in the private memorial grove of the Janna Kalderash School for Exceptional Young Women, next to the plot where Buffy and Xander had previously picked out for themselves their own resting places. There was room for all, and the dearly-mourned occupant already there would of course welcome her father.

At the hilltop, Buffy carefully pulled back on its brass hinges the urn's lid. The Slayer then tipped over the small vessel, allowing its contents to pour out.

The soft grey ashes floated in the air. Shielded by Buffy's body, part of this powder fell to the ground by her feet, coating all of the memorial plaques. More ashes then drifted off the hilltop, to descend upon the environs below and cover what was there, including a beach cottage where a family had once been truly happy together.

However, the greater part of the ashes were seized by the blustery wind. These remains were swept up and borne off towards the broad ocean, where there seemed to be no limit to how far they would go. Along with the intangible crowd, Buffy watched with her keen Slayer sight until not even she could see any more signs of what had once been someone she'd been married to, 'til death did them part.

Then and there, Buffy Summers made her final farewell to Brandon Martin, by reciting a poem Karen had earlier given to the younger woman. From her own past experiences, Buffy knew it was totally appropriate, this short elegy written by a nearly unknown Mary Elizabeth Frye.

"_Do not stand at my grave and weep,  
I am not there, I do not sleep.  
I am in a thousand winds that blow,  
I am the softly falling snow.  
I am the gentle showers of rain,  
I am the fields of ripening grain.  
I am in the morning hush,  
I am in the graceful rush  
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,  
I am the starshine of the night.  
I am in the flowers that bloom,  
I am in a quiet room.  
I am in the birds that sing,  
I am in each lovely thing.  
Do not stand at my grave and cry,  
I am not there. I do not die._"


End file.
